LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
Shelf JL»— 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



SEP 19 1815 



Scotland's Influence 



ON 



CIVILIZ 




THE 



Rev. LEROY J. HALSEY, D.D., LL.D., 

Author of " Literary Attractions of the Bible," " The Beauty 
of Immanuel," "Living Christianity," etc. 



PHILADELPHIA I 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 

1334 CHESTNUT STREET. 



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COPYRIGHT, 1885, BY 

THE TRUSTEES OF THE 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION. 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 



Westcott & Thomson, 
Stereotypers and Electrotypers, Philada. 



conteKt^: -"•*'■;" 



CHAPTER 'i. * m '** ' 

PAGE 

Scotland's Place in History 5 



CHAPTER II. 
The Long Struggle for Liberty 12 

CHAPTER III. 
Her Great Historic Names 19 

CHAPTER IV. 
Grand Results of the Conflict for Liberty ... 29 

CHAPTER V. 
The Two Principal Cities 41 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Pulpit of Scotland 49 

CHAPTER VII. 
Scotland's Literature and Authorship 59 



4 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

FAGS 

The Science and Philosophy of Scotland 77 



CHAPTER IX. 
The Women of :5oti^nd 100 

CHAPTER X. 
The Influei^ce of Scottish Song 120 



CHAPTER XL 
The Scottish Universities and Reviews 144 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Churches of Scotland 158 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Scottish Art and Industry 177 



CHAPTER XIV. 

or, Influence c 
America and Other Lands 208 



The Scot Abroad; or, Influence of Scotland on 



CHAPTER XV. 
Retrospect and Conclusion 239 



SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE 

ON 

CIVILIZATION. 



CHAPTER I. 

SCOTLAND'S PLACE IN HISTORY. 

THE land of the thistle and the heather, the 
castle and the crag, is at best but a narrow 
land — two hundred and eighty-eight miles between 
extremes from north to south, and fifty-two from 
east to west. Its place in history, however, is 
well assured, and its influence is wide as the 
world. Its physical aspect is exceedingly diver- 
sified and picturesque. The sky bends in beauty, 
the soil teems with verdure, the air rings in elastic 
tension, the waters sparkle with life and health. 
It is a land where youth may drink in exhilaration 
with every breath, manhood find food for high 
endeavor in every battle of life, and old age 
flourish like the evergreen pine. With a coast- 
line of twenty-five hundred miles so deeply in- 
denting the main land on three sides as to bring 

5 



6 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

every foot of it within forty-five miles of the sea, 
with nearly eight hundred islands closely envi- 
roning it and furnishing many a quiet inlet and 
many a bold outlook to the ocean, and with an 
alternating panorama of highland and lowland, 
of lake, river and mountain, through all its bor- 
ders, — Scotland would seem to be the spot of all 
the earth ordained by Providence for the dwell- 
ing-place of a hardy, athletic, gallant race. 

Such, in fact, have been its destiny and its 
history. It is not the country, but the heroic 
people inhabiting it, that has given Scotland its 
name in history and its influence on the world's 
civilization. And the object of this monograph 
is to sketch in briefest outline a few salient points 
in the character of the people, the work they 
have done and the influence they have exerted. 

Who has not admired the genius and gloried 
in the heroism of that long line of "Scottish 
worthies" who fought as if they were fighting 
the battles of all mankind and gave their names 
to history as an everlasting remembrance ? Who 
has not followed them down from century to cen- 
tury and often felt his indignation ablaze at the 
recital of their wrongs and their sacrifices for 
truth and for conscience' sake? What associa- 
tions crowd upon us, what memories awake, 
what inspirations kindle, at the mention of such 
names as Bruce and Wallace, Knox and Melville, 
Argyle and Murray, Gillespie and Henderson, 



PLACE IN HISTORY. 7 

Erskine and Chalmers, Scott and Burns, Living- 
stone and Alexander Duff! 

It is instructive to notice the part which the 
little nationalities of the earth have played in 
the grand drama of civilization. We hear much 
about the " great powers " and how they shape 
the destiny of the world. History, both ancient 
and modern, has much to tell us of their maj- 
esty, their broad domain, their almost omnipo- 
tent sway. The old world powers of the Orient — 
Assyria, Chaldea, Egypt, Medo-Persia, Macedonia, 
Rome — all figure largely on the pages of the past, 
each claiming in its turn the mastery of the world. 
In more recent times the great races of Germany, 
France, Spain, Austria, Russia, Prussia, Turkey, 
England, have almost monopolized the map of 
Europe, where they still struggle for the balance 
of power. Is this the sum of the old-world 
civilized history? The whole tale is not told 
until we have looked at the little nationalities — 
Palestine, Greece, Venetia, Switzerland, the Neth- 
erlands, Scotland — each on its narrow strip of soil 
and with its wide influence on the world. Where 
has the human race risen to higher glory in the 
prowess of the individual man or in the achieve- 
ments of the body politic than in these " pent-up 
Uticas " of the rocks or seas ? Here is a belt 
of once-independent states, small isolated nations, 
stretching diagonally across the very heart of the 
civilized world from south-east to north-west. 



S SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

on the very line of march which civilization fol- 
lowed when it left the East and made the history 
of modern Europe. There is something sublime 
in the influence which has gone out over all time 
from these apparently insignificant corners of 
the earth. There is something which seems to 
point to an invisible and almighty hand that can 
work alike by many or by few, and that often 
with the smallest means accomplishes its great- 
est works. 

Strike from history these five or six lesser 
nationalities, and who then could tell the whole 
story of arts and arms, of literature and phil- 
osophy, of national independence, of civil and 
religious liberty? The Maccabean deliverers of 
Palestine, the Greeks at Marathon, the Vene- 
tian masters of the seas, the Swiss compatriots 
of William Tell, the heroes of the Dutch repub- 
lic, the Scots of Stirling Bridge and Bannockburn, 
belong to all nations and to all time. They have 
done much to make the larger nations what they 
were, and to make the world what it is. Pales- 
tine gave the world a religion — the first, the last, 
the best, the only divine, religion. Greece gave 
it art, literature, philosophy, the highest which 
human genius unassisted ever attained. Venice 
gave it the earliest essays in that skill of finance 
and commerce which has since ruled all civil- 
ized nations. Switzerland and Holland gave it 
the earliest practical demonstration of those re- 



PLACE IN HISTORY. 9 

publican institutions which to-day constitute the 
civic glory of the American national Union. Scot- 
land, besides other great gifts, has bequeathed to 
it the finest example to be found in all Christen- 
dom of a thoroughly-educated, law-abiding, free 
and Christianized people. 

In some respects there is a marked parallel 
between Scotland and Greece — the one at the 
extreme north-west, the other at the extreme 
south-east, of Europe; the one jutting out high 
upon the Atlantic, the other overlooking the 
Mediterranean waters — Scotland being somewhat 
the larger of the two. Both are peninsular ter- 
minations of a larger territory and deeply inter- 
penetrated by surrounding seas. They are wholly 
different in climatic influences, the one looking 
southward over sunny and pacific seas which 
greatly modify the conditions of all animal and 
vegetative life, the other facing northward over 
wild and tempest-tossed waters with no protect- 
ing barrier against the storms of the frozen ocean. 
Each alike, however, is marvelously beautified by 
every changing mood of hill and valley, forest 
and mountain-chain. Each alike is, or was, the 
native home of a race of heroes, the birthplace 
of a long and glorious history in the days of its 
independence. Europe had but one Greece, the 
abode of the Muses, the battle-ground of the 
giants, the alma mater of science, philosophy and 
literature. And Europe has had but one Scot- 



IO SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

land for that older realm of beauty. Byron per- 
haps sang too sad a requiem in the line, 

" Tis Greece, but living Greece no more;" 

for when the iron yoke of the Turk shall be 
broken — as broken it will be — Greece is yet to 
awake to a new and nobler destiny. Scotland, 
however, needs no requiem. Her separate na- 
tionality is indeed gone, but no iron yoke has 
ever crushed her spirit. 'Tis Scotland — living 
Scotland — still; and the later glory outshines 
the earlier. 

The sceptre of dominion has passed from the 
old capital and passed into other hands, but the 
heroic race is still there in all its pristine vigor, 
undegenerated, unconquered, well worthy of the 
national emblem, and now as ever ready to make 
good its old motto : " Nemo me impune lacesset." 
The rugged hills and granite rocks that had so 
often given it shelter in the hour of disaster were 
not more indestructible than was the hardy life- 
blood which flowed through Scottish veins during 
all those years of conflict. That persistent purpose 
of a brave and united people who loved liberty 
as they loved life itself, that undefeated and un- 
conquerable national spirit which had showed 
itself so strong in Wallace and Bruce, at last 
asserted its power and its right to the soil in the 
just and equal terms of the national compact 
with England. This compact of incorporation 



PLACE IN HISTORY. II 

healed all past breaches and made the larger and 
the smaller kingdoms one and inseparable for all 
time. Nothing of honor, nothing of independ- 
ence, nothing of true national glory, was lost to 
the Scot in becoming a North Briton : it was an 
alliance of equals for the common weal and the 
common defence of Britain. Unlike other re- 
gions of the Old World when smaller national- 
ities have been crushed under the heel of despotic 
power, the traveler of to-day in Scotland finds no 
memorials there of subjection and degeneracy : 
all there is life and freedom. The same glorious 
race that existed a thousand years ago is still at 
home upon its soil, only more advanced in all the 
elements of true national greatness, and the no- 
bler, too, because of all the fiery trials of the 
past. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE LONG STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. 

THE most impressive spectacle in history is 
not the march of mighty armies led by a 
conqueror and treading down all opposition un- 
der the iron heel of War, but a gallant people 
standing on the line of right within its own bor- 
ders and there heroically defending its firesides 
and its institutions of civil and religious freedom 
against overwhelming numbers. Such was the 
attitude of Scotland, and such the sublime spec- 
tacle of her intrepid race, through the long wast- 
ing wars that reddened all her southern borders 
and at times extinguished many of her noblest 
families. In all history it would be difficult to 
find a more enduring and heroic people. 

The present population of Scotland is upward 
of three millions. At the date of the final reunion 
and incorporation with England, near the opening 
of the eighteenth century, the whole Scottish peo- 
ple did not exceed one million. In all probability 
there had been no preceding period during the 
long eventful history in which the number of in- 
habitants was not considerably less than a million. 
12 



THE LONG STRUGGLE EOR LIBERTY. 1 3 

Ten centuries of bloody, desolating warfare had 
often decimated the race and cut short illustrious 
lines. Less than two centuries of peaceful agri- 
culture, manufacture and commerce, under the 
genial sway of science, literature, religion, rudi- 
mental education, artistic culture, philosophical 
research and free constitutional government, have 
been sufficient to treble the home-population even 
while an adventurous foreign emigration has been 
carrying its uncounted myriads abroad to people 
every continent and every island of the ocean 
with Scotsmen. The grandest lesson of modern 
history — that peace, not war, is the true policy 
of nations, the ars artium of all human progress — 
was never more strikingly illustrated than it has 
been in the history of Scotland. 

Since the Union of 1707, Scotland has consti- 
tuted an integral portion of the British empire, 
having voluntarily yielded up her separate na- 
tionality after defending it with gallant success 
for more than a thousand years. In the early 
spring of 1603, on the death of Queen Elizabeth, 
James VI. of Scotland, uniting in himself the 
royal titles to the crowns of both kingdoms, had 
quietly ascended the English throne. Edinburgh 
lost her royal court, but for a hundred years 
longer Scotland was still in possession of her 
Parliament and her independence, the joint-sov- 
ereign reigning over the two still separate king- 
doms. But in the year 1706 the Scottish Parlia- 



14 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

ment met for the last time. The members, at the 
opening, rode, as was the custom, in slow and sol- 
emn procession up the old Canongate of Edin- 
burgh from Holyrood Palace to the Parliament- 
house. The act of union was passed by the two 
Parliaments, and on the 1st of May in the year 
following the two rival kingdoms became one; 
the court was transferred to London, and the gov- 
ernment merged into the one Parliament of Great 
Britain. The two nations in the long course of 
their history had met each other in three hun- 
dred and fourteen pitched battles, and had sacri- 
ficed more than a million of men as brave as ever 
wielded claymore, sword or battle-axe. Against 
superior numbers and amidst unparalleled dis- 
asters the lesser realm had fearlessly main- 
tained its independence from the days of Ken- 
neth MacAlpine to those of Robert Bruce, and 
from Bruce down to the last of the Stuart pre- 
tenders. When, however, the Scottish people 
at last yielded to the inexorable logic of events 
and accepted the situation, they went into the 
Union with a brilliant record and an unsullied 
escutcheon. They had covered themselves with 
glory (at times nothing else had been left to cov- 
er with), and they carried with them as the best 
prestige for the future the grandest of all remem- 
brances — the remembrance of a heroic national 
history. The Scot had now become a North 
Briton, but Scotland was living Scotland still. 



THE LONG STRUGGLE FOR LLBERTY. 1 5 

" Deep-graven on her breast she wore 
The names of all her valiant dead, 
And with the great inscription felt 
As Douglas with De Bruce' s heart — 
That she was still a conqueror." 

The fundamental principle of the union with 
England was that of a complete incorporation 
of the two nationalities in one government under 
one sovereign head and one representative Parlia- 
ment, with equal rights and privileges for the peo- 
ple and a proportionate burden of the common 
taxation. The conditions of the problem then set- 
tled and the greatness of that settlement are well 
stated in the following sentences from Charles 
Knight's History of England: "The complete 
union of two independent nations, to be brought 
about by common consent and the terms to be 
settled as in a commercial partnership, was an 
event which seems natural and easy when we 
look to the geographical position of the two na- 
tions and to the circumstance that they had been 
partially united for a century under six sovereigns 
wearing the crown of each kingdom. But when 
we look to the long-standing jealousies of the two 
nations, their sensitive assertion of ancient supe- 
riority, the usual haughty condescension of the 
wealthier country, the sturdy pride of the poorer, 
the ignorance of the bulk of each people of the 
true character of the other, the differences of the 
prevailing forms of religion, the more essential 



1 6 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

differences of laws and their modes of adminis- 
tration, — we may consider the completion of 
this union as one of the greatest achievements 
of statesmanship." 

It was, in fact, an admirable adjustment of all 
the old grievances and a fitting close to the feuds 
and animosities, inherited from generation to gen- 
eration, which had kept the neighboring king- 
doms in perpetual strife. If they had continued 
to fight each other to the present day, they could 
not have received an adjustment more honorable 
and advantageous to both parties. The weaker 
kingdom lost nothing by becoming an integral 
part of a greater kingdom, and the greater lost 
nothing, but gained much, by uniting its destiny 
with a powerful race that should henceforward 
contribute its full share to the national greatness. 
The Scot only relinquished a smaller for a more 
enlarged and permanent independence. He found 
a more solid and enduring basis for that national 
independence and that constitutional liberty in de- 
fence of which he had so often drawn the sword. 
There could have been no better, nobler termi- 
nation of the long and bloody conflict. He had, 
indeed, gained all for which he had ever fought. 
The royal race of his native land — that race which 
in the person of Bruce had struggled so hard to 
retain its independent throne — was now upon a 
greater throne, the throne of United Britain. 
That small and often turbulent Parliament of his 



THE LONG STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY. \J 

ancient capital had ceased only to give place to 
another and more powerful Parliament of the 
united nation, of which he was to be a constitu- 
ent member, and of which the Scottish people, 
like the English, were to be independent electors. 
The lesser nationality was not lost, but merged 
into the greater. The people who could look 
back through a long line of heroes never quail- 
ing before the face of battle surrendered no 
dignity by a voluntary union into which they 
carried such a history. 

It was a union not easily effected. In all prob- 
ability, it could never have been accomplished 
except by those peculiar circumstances which 
gradually prepared and at last reconciled the two 
divergent and conflicting nationalities. The cost 
of the preparation had been immense. To the 
last there were those in the smaller realm who 
stoutly resisted what seemed an unnatural con- 
nection. They felt that the knell of Scotland's 
glory had sounded. The union, however, once 
effected, soon demonstrated the wisdom of its 
policy. The success of it was its magnificent 
vindication. The' problem was plain enough 
when the overruling providence of God had once 
solved it by showing how much better it was for 
two powerful races shut up on a narrow island, 
with no natural boundary between them, to dwell 
in the close and peaceful bonds of a great national 
compact than to be for ever wasting each other's 
2 



1 8 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

strength by interminable bloody wars. Under 
such circumstances the good of the one was the 
highest good of the other, and whatever glory 
either could have attained alone was far more 
than doubled by the higher glory of one great 
united nation. Probably no union in all history 
has proved more beneficial to the contracting par- 
ties or become more close and indissoluble. 



CHAPTER III. 

HER GREAT HISTORIC NAMES. 

NOT a little of the heroic and romantic min- 
gles in the long story of Scotland's strug- 
gle for civil and religious liberty, giving rise to 
an illustrious roll known as the " Scottish chiefs " 
and the " Scottish worthies." Who are best enti- 
tled to stand as the representative heroes of that 
history ? Unquestionably, the three greatest names 
are those of William Wallace, Robert Bruce and 
John Knox — Bruce, the noblest of her warrior- 
kings ; Wallace, the most renowned of her peo- 
ple and gentry ; and Knox, the grandest cham- 
pion of her Reformed Church. 

There are two notable epochs in the Scottish 
history, each having all the elements of a mag- 
nificent picture. One of these belongs to the 
sixteenth century, with Knox and Queen Mary 
in the foreground ; the other carries us back to 
the days of Bruce and Wallace and the great 
house of Douglas, at the close of the thirteenth 
and the opening of the fourteenth century. A 
stern and lofty grandeur gathers around the brow 
of Knox. It is not surprising that Carlyle in his 

19 



20 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

Hero-Worship sets up the great Reformer as a 
veritable king of men, the highest type and em- 
bodiment of a nation, a man created for the times, 
the foster-child of divine Providence, " one of the 
few immortal names that were not born to die." 

" John Knox," says Carlyle, " is the one Scots- 
man to whom, of all others, his country and the 
world owe a debt." " The life of Knox," says 
one of our own countrymen, Prof. Samuel J. 
Wilson, " was one of the grandest ever lived on 
this footstool of God. He has been dead these 
three hundred years. During all this time his- 
tory has been busy with his life and character. 
These have been fiercely assailed and eloquently 
defended. For three centuries his work has been 
speaking for him with ever-increasing volume 
of meaning and eloquence. He needs no other 
monument. He needs no other apology." John 
Knox at St. Andrews, or in his pulpit of St. Giles 
at Edinburgh, or summoned into the presence 
of Mary Stuart at Holyrood Palace, is a figure 
as grand as Martin Luther before the Diet of 
Worms. When standing before the imperious 
young queen for the fifth time, alike unawed by 
her threats and unmoved by her tears, and con- 
fronted with angry, indignant questions, " Who 
are you in this commonwealth, and what have 
you to do with my marriage ?" what could ex- 
ceed the calm dignity and heroism of the Reform- 
er's reply? " I am a subject born within the same, 



THE GREAT HISTORIC NAMES. 21 

madam; and, albeit I am neither earl, lord nor 
baron within it, yet has God made me, how abject 
soever I am in your eyes, a profitable member 
within the same. Yea, madam, to me it apper- 
tains no less to forewarn of such things as may 
hurt it, if I foresee them, than it doth to any of 
the nobility." 

It was not in vain that during the dark period 
of ten years' civil strife the voice of Knox had 
been heard ringing like a clarion in St. Giles's 
pulpit at Edinburgh, and that his words had been 
echoed in all the pulpits of the land. " His was 
the voice," says Professor Wilson, " that taught 
the peasant of the Lothians that he was a free- 
man, the equal in the sight of God with the 
proudest peer or prelate that had trampled on 
his forefathers. During the trying vicissitudes 
of civil war, Knox was the one pillar of strength 
upon which Scotland leaned with her whole 
weight. Wise in counsel, utterly fearless in ac- 
tion, mighty in the resistless torrents of his elo- 
quence, the nation turned to him instinctively as 
its God-given leader. With a price upon his 
head, with hired assassins waylaying his path, 
ever at the post of duty and of danger, careless of 
his own life, thinking only of his dear Scotland in 
the darkest extremities of perilous times, waking 
,the expiring courage of heroes with the trum- 
pet-peals of his eloquence, — he fought the good 
fight bravely through until peace was proclaimed, 



22 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

popery was abolished by act of Parliament, and 
a Confession prepared principally by himself was 
adopted. There never was a nobler fight, or one 
that was more signal in its achievements." 

The names of Sir William Wallace and King 
Robert Bruce, from the earlier period of Scottish 
history in the close of the thirteenth and opening 
of the fourteenth century, have been the loved 
themes of the poet, the historian, the orator and 
the statesman through all the succeeding ages. 
They have been the laurel-crowned heroes not 
only of their own country, but in all lands where 
the love of freedom has burned brightly in the 
hearts of the people. They have been the syn- 
onyms for natural independence, manly courage, 
heroic daring and perseverance unto death. They 
are the very watchwords of liberty for every op- 
pressed race and nation, in every battle of the 
weak against the strong, of the right against the 
wrong. Though one of them, Wallace, after win- 
ning one great battle, was crushed by treachery 
and superior numbers in a second, and at last 
shamefully executed as a traitor, his name has yet 
come down through history as one of the honored 
and immortal names that can never perish. Bruce 
a few years later took up the same battle of his 
country, and after almost unparalleled disasters 
and the most heroic energy was at last crowned 
with victory in the memorable battle of Bannock- 
burn. He lived to show by one great example 



THE GREAT HISTORIC NAMES. 2$ 

how freedom's cause may at last be won. If 
little Scotland had done no more than produce 
her Wallace and her Bruce, she would thereby 
have gained the lasting gratitude and admiration 
of the world, and sent down an influence and a 
prestige to be felt as long as independence and 
liberty are appreciated among men. 

In this connection must be briefly mentioned 
two other illustrious names on the roll of Scot- 
land's canonized heroes. They stand as the pio- 
neers and the representatives of her noble army 
of Christian champions in the cause of truth. 
These are Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart, 
the precursors of the great Reformation — the first 
a young man of twenty-three with the blood of 
earls and dukes in his veins and a brilliant future 
opening before him ; the other, the learned and 
eloquent evangelist whose voice rang like a trum- 
pet over Scotland, and whose powerful preaching, 
whether in churches or in the open air, drew 
crowds of admiring people to hear him. By 
order of the papal hierarchy each was arrested, 
condemned and burned at the stake before the 
doors of the University of St. Andrews, which 
in better times they might have adorned by their 
learning and their eloquence. The worthy prede- 
cessors of Knox, and endued with his heroic spirit, 
they bravely met the issue, and nobly died for 
the rights of conscience and the word of God. 
From their ashes was kindled the flame of ref- 



24 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

ormation that soon spread over all Scotland and 
prepared the way for the work of Knox. In 
them, truly, the blood of the martyrs became 
the seed of the Church. Cardinal Beaton sought 
to cover their names with infamy and to extin- 
guish their influence for ever. All generations 
have delighted to do them honor. The influence 
of their example has gone out over all the earth. 
It has become an inspiration of zeal and courage 
to the champions of truth and liberty in every 
civilized land. It is one of Scotland's precious 
contributions to the world's history. 

While to the thoughtful student all the ele- 
ments of moral sublimity will ever gather thick- 
est around the later period, with Knox as its 
pioneer and leader, still in the popular estima- 
tion probably the highest heroic interest of the 
Scottish history culminates, in the earlier period, 
around the names of Wallace and Bruce. The 
men of all free and civilized nations, the very 
boys and girls at school to the end of time, will 
read and be thrilled by that story. It was the 
era of the troubadour and the tournament, when 
Europe rang with the fame of the crusader and 
Christendom bowed at the mention of the cross. 
It was the noonday of romance and chivalry — 
the apotheosis of manly honor, of womanly beauty, 
of gallant prowess, of martial glory. There were 
indeed giants on earth in those days, and Scot- 
land's heroes were among them. 



THE GREAT HISTORIC NAMES. 2$ 

With all its glory, it was an age of iron, an 
age of blood. It is not the purpose of this sketch 
to dwell on its great characters or its cruel con- 
flicts ; it is enough now simply to point out influ- 
ences and results. Was all that gallant blood, of 
both the earlier and the later period, shed in vain? 
Assuredly not. It was the price of independence, 
of self-government, of civil and religious liberty. 
Costly as was the sacrifice, long and terrible as 
was the conflict, it was not too dear a cost at 
which to purchase such a boon. When it was 
won, it was not won for Scotland alone, but for 
posterity, for mankind. All that Scotland is to- 
day, all that she holds precious in the arts of 
peaceful industry and in the possession of civil 
and religious freedom, she owes, under God, to 
her own deathless struggle for independence, re- 
newed from century to century until it had red- 
dened her fields with blood and filled her land 
with ruins and monuments. No portion of the 
earth's surface is perhaps more thickly strewn 
with the ashes of martyred heroes and the bones 
of the slaughtered champions of truth and right. 
The seed was long sowing, but the harvest has 
been abundant and glorious. Victoria reigns to- 
day as truly Scotland's queen as she is England's 
— fifty-fourth sovereign of the Scottish royal line 
from Kenneth MacAlpine, and fifty-first of th 
English from Alfred the Great. 

It has been finely said that a land without 



3 



26 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

ruins is a land without memories, and a land 
without memories is a land without liberty. 
" The land that wears a laurel crown may be 
fair to look upon, but twine a few sad cypress- 
leaves around the brow of some bleak and bar- 
ren land (it may be dark and lonely as Monte- 
negro) and it becomes lovely in its coronet of 
sorrow. It wins the sympathies of the heart and 
of history. Crowns of roses fade; crowns of 
thorns endure. Calvaries and crosses take deep- 
est hold of humanity." 

" Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow." 

Byron's strong line might be taken as the text 
and the key to a large portion of the Scottish 
history. In the struggle for national independ- 
ence and constitutional liberty the soil of Scot- 
land was made not only a battlefield, but a 
crowded cemetery. No equal portion of the 
earth's surface could better illustrate the senti- 
ment of a living American bard : 

" Give me a land where the ruins are spread, 
And the living tread light on the hearts of the dead; 
Ay, give me a land that is blest by the dust 
And bright with the deeds of the down-trodden just. 
I honor the land that hath legend and lays 
Enshrining the memory of long-vanished days; 
I honor the land that hath story and song 
To tell of the strife of the right with the wrong. 
Yes, give me the land with a grave in each spot, 
And names in the graves that shall not be forgot : 
There's a grandeur in graves, there's a glory in gloom, 



THE GREAT HISTORIC NAMES. 2J 

For out of the gloom future brightness is born, 

And after the night looms the sunrise of morn ; 

And the graves of the dead, with the grass overgrown, 

May yet form the footstool of Liberty's throne, 

And each single wreck in the warpath of might 

Shall yet be a rock in the temple of Right." 

Every part of Scotland is crowded with such 
memorials of the past — venerable ruins where 
" the living tread light on the hearts of the dead," 
battlefields that " tell of the strife of the right with 
the wrong," sacred enclosures " with a grave in 
every spot " and " names in the graves that shall 
not be forgot." Most of all do these grand mon- 
uments of the past cluster around Edinburgh, the 
unique and classic capital enthroned among crags 
where the new and the old so strangely meet. 
There a thousand associations of the past chain 
the antiquarian, a thousand beauties of the pres- 
ent make it to the eye of the artist the most 
picturesque city in Europe, 

" Where splendor falls on castle-walls 
And snowy summits old in story." 

Upon the splendid city of to-day the old castle 
looks down out of history. Within or close 
around it were transacted many of the most 
memorable scenes in the life of the nation. A 
mile from the castle, at the eastern termination 
of the Canongate, still remains in antique splen- 
dor the famous Holyrood Palace, flanked on one 
side by the monument-crowned Calton Hill, and 



28 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

on the other by the loftier Salisbury Crag and 
Arthur's Seat, that stand like sentinels to guard 
the enchanted spot. Just on the outside of the 
city, in the Greyfriars' churchyard, the National 
Covenant — the Magna Charta of Scottish free- 
dom — was signed in the presence of sixty thou- 
sand persons. Close at hand, in what was then 
the open space of the Grass Market, hundreds 
who had signed that Covenant suffered death at 
the stake rather than abjure the rights of con- 
science. Thousands all over Scotland shared the 
same fate. 

" They lived unknown 
Till persecution dragged them into fame 
And chased them up to heaven. Their ashes flew 
No mortal tells us whither." 

Their heroic virtues, however, survived fresh 
and green in the memory of succeeding ages. 
The influence of their example became the heri- 
tage of Christendom. Not only Scotland, but 
England and America, became the richer for the 
legacy. All lands where history is read, where 
civil and religious liberty is prized, have felt the 
inspiring influence of that example. It is a part 
of the history of modern civilization. Our Chris- 
tian institutions in America are to-day in large 
measure indebted to that moral power of truth 
and right and freedom which Scotland's martyrs 
for conscience' sake so nobly illustrated on the 
scaffold and at the stake. 



CHAPTER IV. 

GRAND RESULTS OF THE CONFLICT FOR LIB- 
ERTY. 

IT is easy enough for us now, after several cen- 
turies of uninterrupted progress in Scotland, 
to look back into her heroic ages, to see the 
meaning of the great principles then so fiercely- 
contested, and to trace the results which have 
flowed from the vindication of those principles. 
In no part of the world is the true philosophy 
of history more easily discerned than in the his- 
tory of Scotland. And in no part of Scottish 
history have her gallant people given to man- 
kind a more important and impressive lesson for 
all ages than in the heroic times of Wallace, 
Bruce and Knox, and their successors of the 
Solemn League and Covenant. Through all the 
dark pages God's hand is clearly seen protecting 
his true Church and establishing the right. 

It must never be forgotten that Scotland had 
a double battle to fight — first, that of national 
independence and constitutional liberty against 
her more powerful neighbor, and then the hard- 
er, nobler battle for conscience and a pure Church, 

29 



30 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

against both papal and prelatical domination. 
There are few sublimer chapters in history than 
those which recount the deeds of the Scotch 
Reformers of the sixteenth century, the Presby- 
terian Covenanters of the seventeenth century, 
and the never-to-be-forgotten founders of the 
Free Church in the nineteenth century. The 
time was long, the causes of the conflicts were 
different, but the battle was substantially the same. 
The rights, liberties and principles of an evan- 
gelical Christianity and a pure spiritual Church, 
preached in Scotland by the martyred Wishart 
and Hamilton, heroically defended before kings, 
queens and nobles by Knox and Melville, vin- 
dicated and established by Henderson, Gillespie, 
Rutherford and their compeers, solemnly sworn 
to by the whole people in their national League 
and Covenant, cemented with the blood and at- 
tested by the last breath of thousands of martyrs 
in the "killing-time" of the bloody Claverhouse, 
— these grand principles of a Reformed religion 
and an evangelical Presbyterianism, for ever as- 
serting Christ's cross and crown and covenant 
in a free State and a free Church, we have lived 
to see carried to their consummation and estab- 
lishment under the leadership of Thomas Chal- 
mers and his five hundred coadjutors in the 
memorable Free-Church movement of 1843, the 
deed and the day of Scotland's greatest ecclesi- 
astical glory. 



RESULTS OF CONFLICT FOR LIBERTY. 3 1 

It was in vindication of these principles that 
John Knox had dared to tell Mary Stuart the 
truth even at the cost of her queenly anger and 
her woman's tears. At a time when men were 
beheaded or driven into exile for their senti- 
ments, and when kings had power to send a sub- 
ject to the scaffold for a word, it required cour- 
age of the highest order to stand up as Andrew 
Melville did before James VI. and utter these 
memorable words : " Sir, we will always rever- 
ence Your Majesty in public ; but since we have 
this occasion to be with Your Majesty in private, 
and since you are brought into extreme danger 
of your life and crown, and along with you the 
Church of God are alike to go to wreck for not 
telling you the truth and giving you faithful 
counsel, we must discharge our duty or else be 
traitors both to Christ and you. Therefore, sir, 
as divers times before I have told you, so now 
again I must tell you, there are two kings and 
two kingdoms in Scotland : there is King James, 
the head of the commonwealth, and there is 
Christ Jesus, the King of the Church, whose 
subject James the Sixth is, and of whose king- 
dom he is not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, 
but a member. Sir, those whom Christ has called 
and commanded to watch over his Church have 
power and authority from him to govern his spir- 
itual kingdom, both jointly and severally; the 
which no Christian king or prince should control 



32 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

and discharge, but fortify and assert, otherwise 
they are not faithful subjects of Christ and mem- 
bers of his Church. We will yield to you your 
place and give you all due obedience, but again 
I say you are not the head of the Church : you 
cannot give us that eternal life which we seek 
for even in this world, and you cannot deprive 
us of it. Sir, when you were in your swaddling- 
clothes, Christ Jesus reigned freely in this land, 
in spite of all his enemies. Permit me, then, 
freely to meet in the name of Christ and attend 
to the interests of that Church of which you are 
the chief member." 

Well and nobly said, brave Melville ! Well 
and nobly done ! Never was a grander truth 
more manfully stated and more stoutly stood by 
through all Old Scotia's battlefields by all her 
truest sons and daughters. That granite truth 
so nobly wrought out of Scottish quarries is to- 
day the very corner-stone in our glorious temple 
of civil and religious liberty. The struggle had 
been long and fearful; it had lasted a hundred 
years ; it had cost the sacrifice of generations 
of suffering men and women driven into exile 
or wafted to heaven in a winding-sheet of flame ; 
but the triumph was glorious at last. 

The result was a free Church and a free State, 
corelated to God and to the people, but each in- 
dependent of the other in the proper sphere of 
its jurisdiction. The result was a vindication in 



RESULTS OF CONFLICT FOR LIBERTY. 33 

a manner never before understood in any land 
of the true spiritual import of those memorable 
words uttered by Christ before Pilate's bar : " Ren- 
der unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and 
unto God the things that are God's." That great 
truth incorporated in the Westminster Confes- 
sion is the basis of all religious liberty and of 
all the Presbyterian Churches in the world : 
" God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath 
left it free from the doctrines and commandments 
of men which are in any thing contrary to his 
word, or beside it in matters of faith or worship. 
So that to believe such doctrines, or to obey 
such commandments out of conscience, is to be- 
tray true liberty of conscience ; and the requir- 
ing of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind 
obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience and 
reason also." 

This grand deliverance of scriptural truth, so 
clearly formulated in the Presbyterian Standards 
and so bravely maintained at every cost in Scot- 
land through the centuries following the Refor- 
mation, may be regarded as the essential article 
of all true ecclesiastical polity and of all relig- 
ious liberty. To maintain it intact and to hand 
it down to posterity was well worth the blood 
and the treasure which it cost the heroic found- 
ers of the Scotch churches. Certainly there is 
not a Presbyterian church in the world to-day 
which does not thank God for this glorious in- 



34 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

heritance of Christian liberty, and rejoice that 
our Scottish forefathers were able to stand up 
for it in the hour of peril and bring it safely with 
them through the fiery ordeal. If the Scottish 
heroes who suffered unto death for Christ's cove- 
nant and crown had rendered no other service to 
mankind, this sacrifice alone in behalf of free- 
dom of conscience had been enough to immor- 
talize the service and entitle them to the grati- 
tude of the latest posterity. 

It was strikingly appropriate that a service to 
freedom and to mankind so great and inestimable 
should find honorable mention at the First Gen- 
eral Presbyterian Alliance, held in 1877 at Edin- 
burgh, the very seat and centre of the memorable 
conflict. That great council, gathered from the 
Presbyterian Churches of all lands, in the bosom 
of this venerable mother-Church of the widely- 
dispersed family, was itself a demonstration of 
what Scotland had done for Christendom by the 
long struggle for civil and religious liberty. It 
was one of the many results of the conflict, and 
no inconsiderable one at that ; for the men there 
assembled from so many widely-separated Chris- 
tian lands were themselves representatives of the 
very principles for which the Scottish forefathers 
had so long and so bravely battled. One of the 
delegates from the United States, Archibald A. 
Hodge, D. D., of Princeton, New Jersey, speak- 
ing of this priceless Presbyterian birthright of 



RESULTS OF CONFLICT FOR LIBERTY. 35 

civil and religious freedom, in pertinent and truth- 
ful words thus called to remembrance the place 
and the period from which it came : " In the orig- 
inal conflict these principles were brought into 
antagonism with absolutism both in Church and 
State. They first, though at the sacrifice of count- 
less martyrs, especially in France, Holland and 
Scotland, broke the power of the hierarchy and 
conquered liberty in the sphere of religious faith 
and practice. More gradually, but by inevitable 
consequence, they secured popular liberty in the 
sphere of civil and political life. The conditions 
of modern times, to the wants and tendencies of 
which it is our duty to adjust and apply Presby- 
terian principles, are largely the outcome of the 
influence exerted during the past three hundred 
years upon the life of European nations by those 
Presbyterian principles themselves." 

Another representative from America on that 
occasion, Moses D. Hoge, D. D., of Richmond, 
Virginia, also called to remembrance the princi- 
ples and the heroes of the great conflict in the 
following impressive words : " The saddest, and 
yet the brightest, pages of our ecclesiastical his- 
tory are those which recount the struggles of 
our fathers in behalf of the sacred rights of con- 
science. I need not speak of the practical power 
of our principles as they have been so often illus- 
trated in the heroic conflicts for the right and the 
true, whether in the glens of Scotland, or in the 



36 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

villages of France, or on the northern coast of 
Ireland, or among the mountains of Switzerland. 
A portion of the people of my native State trace 
their ancestry back to the noble race of men who 
were compelled by Bourbon tyranny to flee from 
their once happy homes on the fertile plains of 
Languedoc or in the delightful valleys of the 
Loire, and who found an asylum on the high 
banks of the James River in Virginia or on the 
lowlands of the Cooper and Santee Rivers of South 
Carolina. Others of my Virginia people are the 
descendants of the men who contended for Christ's 
crown and covenant at the foot of the heath-clad 
Grampians, or who fought the dragoons under 
Claverhouse at Bothwell Bridge, or who at the 
siege of Londonderry held out to the bitter end 
against James himself. There is yet in a branch 
of my own family the old family Bible which 
their Huguenot ancestors carried with them first 
to Holland and then to Virginia. Its covers are 
worn, its leaves are yellow and faded ; they have 
often been wet with the salt spray of the sea and 
the salt tears of the sorrowing exiles ; but, though 
the names are growing dim on the family register, 
I trust they are bright in the book of life ; and 
now, thank God! the descendants of the Hugue- 
not and Covenanter, and of the noble martyrs 
of the North of Ireland, are found dwelling to- 
gether in one happy ecclesiastical household on 
our peaceful Virginia shores, with none to mo- 



RESULTS OF CONFLICT FOR LIBERTY. 37 

lest or make them afraid, yet ready, as I trust in 
God — ready once more, if need be — to brave 
and peril all for the testimony of Jesus and for 
the defence of the faith once delivered to the 
saints." 

One of the grand results secured by the long 
and bitter conflicts in Scotland was the settle- 
ment on a permanent basis of the true scriptural 
doctrine of religious tolerance. Clear as was the 
teaching of Christ on the subject, the princes and 
rulers of this world, and even his profound fol- 
lowers in the Churches established by law, were 
slow to learn the great truth. It is a truth which 
the papal Church never learned, being one dia- 
metrically opposed to its whole doctrinal and 
political system. Nor has it been always fully 
understood and practiced even in Protestant lands 
where the Erastian principle of state supremacy 
in matters of religion has been asserted. But 
from the dawn of the Reformation it was fully 
understood by the Presbyterian Church of Scot- 
land, and for ages maintained at every cost, even 
when there were some within her bosom who 
coveted alliance with the State and stood ready 
to sacrifice the independence of the Church and 
the rights of conscience at the bidding of lordly 
power. The great doctrine of a broad universal 
toleration — so strongly maintained, and at last 
secured, by the Presbyterians of Scotland — was 
but the necessary logical sequence of the funda- 



38 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

mental article of their ecclesiastical creed that 
God alone is Lord of the conscience in all mat- 
ters of religious opinion. Where there is no au- 
thority to bind the conscience except God and 
his inspired word, every man is necessarily free 
to exercise his own private judgment in ascer- 
taining what the truth is, and his own conscience 
in accepting and following the truth. This is 
true religious liberty, and this the basis of relig- 
ious toleration. 

It was the true moral glory of the Scottish Re- 
formers, and of their successors through the ages 
that followed, that they understood these essential 
principles of Presbyterianism and dared to main- 
tain them in the face of all opposition. It is true 
that they did not always live up to them with an 
absolute consistency, for in ages of intolerance 
and persecution and Erastian interference on the 
part of the civil power they were sometimes 
driven to the wall and compelled, in self-defence, 
to strike back the iron hand that showed no tol- 
eration and sought only to crush them. Still, 
through all oppressions from without and amid 
all the feuds and divisions within, they did main- 
tain to the last, and they brought unscathed 
through the conflict, that glorious heritage of 
a free Church and a free State, with equal rights 
of conscience for all classes of men, in which 
not only Scotland, but the whole Presbyterian 
world, rejoices to-day. The distinction is as just 



RESULTS OF CONFLICT FOR LIBERTY. 39 

as it is honorable that through all its history the 
Presbyterian Church of Scotland has been a lib- 
erty-loving, a conscience-asserting and a tolerant 
Church. The Presbyterian Church has never 
been, either in Scotland or in any other land, an 
intolerant or a persecuting Church. It could 
never have persecuted without violating the 
fundamental principles of its divine constitu- 
tion. 

It was no empty boast, but the truth of his- 
tory, when the Right Honorable Lord Moncrief, 
one of the chairmen of the Edinburgh council, 
said, " The Presbyterian polity has been the cra- 
dle of toleration, and it has always been the 
stronghold of civil liberty. I do not know a bet- 
ter test of the efficiency and purity of a Church 
than these two features. A Church which is the 
enemy of toleration and a Church that is the in- 
timate companion of political oppression I do 
not think by any possibility can be an apostolic 
Church. But the Presbyterian Church was the 
cradle of toleration. I am far from saying that 
in days when religious opinions were really the 
politics of the times, and when men's lives hung 
by a thread, political or religious toleration was 
much in vogue; but this I do say— that where 
Presbyterian principles have prevailed there tole- 
ration has sprung and flourished, and that in the 
quarters where the principles of the early Reform- 
ers and Presbyterians first acquired strength the 



40 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

principles of toleration followed in their wake. 
The Presbyterians of the North have had a large 
part in establishing civil and religious liberty in 
this country, and I am quite certain that where 
the Presbyterian polity prevails there will tolera- 
tion, there will liberty, flourish." 



CHAPTER V. 

THE TWO PRINCIPAL CITIES. 

LET us now turn for a moment to survey the 
two principal cities of this historic North- 
land, Edinburgh — or Edinboro', as the Scots call 
it — overlooking the Forth from an elevation of 
several hundred feet, the most picturesque city 
in Europe, and Glasgow, the city of the Clyde, 
the great metropolis of manufacture and com- 
merce, the one commanding the eastern, and 
the other the western, waters. These two great 
cities, some forty miles apart, may be called the 
eyes of Scotland — organs of vision and high in- 
telligence through which she gives expression to 
the thought of her people and holds daily com- 
munication with all the world. 

Glasgow, the grand commercial emporium, far 
surpasses the sister-city in wealth and trade, and 
also in population, which now reaches about half 
a million, while Edinburgh has less than a quarter 
of a million. But for what is lacking in wealth 
and power Edinburgh is fully compensated in 
splendor of situation, in glorious memories of 
the past, and in the magnificence of her education- 

41 



42 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

al and religious institutions. Glasgow, the queenly 
city of the Clyde, with her ocean-steamers, her 
iron-clad ships of war, her vast cotton-mills, her 
merchant-princes and her colossal fortunes, that 
has in recent times grown to be one of the chief 
builders of the British navy, is not, indeed, with- 
out historic associations linking her to the mem- 
orable past. Tracing her foundations back into 
the sixth century — even earlier than those of 
Edinburgh — she bore her full share in all the 
terrific conflicts that wrought out the deliver- 
ance of Scotland. She can to-day point with 
just pride not only to her marts of trade and 
the palatial residences of her citizens, but to her 
ancient and magnificent cathedral, that survived 
the disasters of centuries — perhaps the most per- 
fect entire specimen of Gothic architecture now 
in the realm. She can point, also, with equal 
satisfaction to her churches, ancient and mod- 
ern, to her educational and benevolent institu- 
tions, and to her great university, rivaling in learn- 
ing and number of students the more famous city 
of the Forth. 

Edinburgh — or Edwin's Burg, so called from 
the Saxon king of England who laid its founda- 
tions in the seventh century — now covers those 
parallel ridges and the deep valleys between 
which extend east and west along the Firth of 
Forth about a mile's distance from the water. 
The old city was built on the middle and high- 



THE TWO PRINCIPAL CITIES. 43 

est of the ridges. The ground gradually rises 
toward the west until it culminates in the great 
massive rock on which the castle stands, com- 
manding the whole city and its environs. Along 
the summit of the ridge for about a mile, from 
Holyrood Palace at the east up to Castle Rock, 
forming, as it were, the backbone of the town, 
was thickly built the old Canongate, or high 
street, lined with the residences of nobility and 
gentry. On this street stood the famous cathedral 
of St. Giles, the Tron church, John Knox's house, 
and other notable edifices. Here dwelt the lordly 
Stuart kings in the palace of Holyrood. Here 
the young and beautiful queen of Scots held her 
court until she wantonly threw away her crown. 
Here the first General Assembly of the Church 
of Scotland met, in 1560, in the little Magdalen 
chapel, deep down in the ravine to the north of 
the street. It was a sort of Thermopylae where 
this band of heroes pledged themselves to main- 
tain against all the world of papal power the 
divine rights of Presbytery. Here, on the hill, 
in old St. Giles church, John Knox — a man whom 
his enemies hated while living, and of whom they 
said when dead, " Here lies one who never feared 
the face of man " — poured forth his fiery elo- 
quence. Here are the spots where Rizzio fell, 
where the ill-fated Darnley was blown up, where 
the daring Montrose was dragged to execution, 
frowning defiance on his foes, and not far off is 



44 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

the place where the great regent Murray was as- 
sassinated. And here stood the scaffold on which 
the noble Morton, and the still nobler statesman 
the marquis of Argyle, were beheaded. 

Edinburgh is full of such memorials. The 
past confronts us at every step. The castle looks 
down upon us out of history. To the poet, the 
historian and the artist almost every foot of Scot- 
land is classic ground. The traveler is scarcely 
ever out of sight of places of historic interest or 
scenes of surpassing beauty — battlefields like Ban- 
nockburn, Falkirk, Bothwell Bridge and Culloden, 
that once shook under the fierce onset of opposing 
hosts ; venerable abbeys like Melrose, Dryburgh 
and Dunfermline, fast crumbling to decay ; castles 
once impregnable, like those of Stirling, Berwick, 
Roslin, Dumbarton and Loch Levin ; mountain- 
peaks and highland lakes : Ben Lomond, Ben 
Lide and Ben Nevis rising in solitary grandeur 
to the clouds, Loch Katrine, Loch Lomond and 
Loch Ness with banks of sylvan beauty mirrored 
in their crystal depths, — all new-daguerrotyped for 
the world and made immortal for ever by the pen 
of the great enchanter Walter Scott, in this re- 
spect the Scot of all the Scots. 

After all, it is in and around Edinburgh that 
these precious and sacred memorabilia cluster 
the thickest. Here it is that the history of a 
thousand years has been fossilized without los- 
ing its living interest — written on the very streets 



THE TWO PRINCIPAL CITIES. 45 

of a crowding population, graven as with an iron 
pen on rocks and crags and castle-walls. In this 
respect there is no city in Europe except Rome 
or Athens that can be compared with Edinburgh. 
Edinburgh is to Scotland what Rome is to Italy, 
what Athens was to Greece, what Jerusalem was 
to Palestine. 

The splendid modern city, with its magnificent 
Prince's street and its classical monument to Wal- 
ter Scott, is chiefly built on the northern ridge, 
nearest the Forth, while the southern ridge is 
largely given up to great manufacturing estab- 
lishments. Along the bottom of the south val- 
ley runs the old Cowgate street, once famous in 
history, now crowded with the humble tenements 
of the poor. Through the corresponding north 
ravine extend the great railways connecting the 
city at the west end with Glasgow and at the east 
with London. These deep valleys are now bridged 
over with solid masonry and crossed by streets run- 
ning north and south at the summit-level of the 
ridges, some hanging high in air on stone arches, 
and the one nearest the castle built on an artificial 
mound constructed for the purpose. Edinburgh 
thus presents the unique spectacle not only of an 
old city and a new looking each other in the face 
from opposite hills, but of an upper and a lower 
city — one bright and beautiful on her airy eleva- 
tions, the other dark and damp in the gloom of 
her sunken valleys. 



46 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

Take now a picture of the city as viewed from 
Calton Hill and drawn by the graphic pen of 
a Scotsman, Alexander Smith : 

" Straight before the mound crosses the valley, 
leaving the white academy buildings ; beyond, the 
castle lifts from grassy slopes and billows of sum- 
mer foliage its weather-stained towers and fortifi- 
cations, the Half-Moon battery giving the folds of 
its standard to the wind. Living in Edinburgh, 
there abides among all things a sense of its 
beauty. Hill, crag, castle, rock, blue stretch of 
sea, the picturesque ridge of the Old Town, the 
squares and terraces of the New, — these things, 
seen once, are not to be forgotten. The quick 
life of to-day, sounding around the relics of an- 
tiquity and overshadowed by the august tra- 
ditions of a kingdom, makes residence in Edin- 
burgh more impressive than residence in any 
other British city. What a poem is that Prince's 
street ! The puppets of the busy many-colored 
hour move about on its pavements, while across 
the ravine Time has piled up the Old Town, ridge 
on ridge, gray as a rocky coast washed and worn 
by the foam of centuries, peaked and jagged by 
gable and roof, windowed from basement to cope, 
the whole surmounted by St. Giles's airy crown. 

" The New is there looking at the Old. Two 
periods are brought face to face, and are yet sep- 
arated by a thousand years. Wonderful on winter 
nights, when the gulley is filled with darkness 



THE TWO PRINCIPAL CITIES. 47 

and out of it rises against the sombre blue and 
the frosty stars that mass and bulwark of gloom 
pierced and quivering with innumerable lights. 
There is nothing in Europe to match it. Could 
you but roll a river down the valley, it would be 
sublime. That ridged and chimneyed bulk of 
blackness with splendor bursting out at every 
pore is the wonderful Old Town, where Scot- 
tish history mainly transacted itself, while, oppo- 
site, the modern Prince's street is blazing through- 
out its length. During the day the castle looks 
down upon the city as out of another world, 
stern with all its peacefulness, its garniture of 
trees, its slopes of grass. The rock is dingy 
enough in color, but after a shower its lichens 
laugh out greenly in the returning sun while 
the rainbow is brightening on the lowering cloud 
beyond. How deep the shadow which the castle 
throws at noon over the gardens at its feet where 
the children play ! How grand where giant bulk 
and towery crown blacken against the sunset ! 

" Fair, too, the New Town, sloping to the sea. 
From George's street, which crowns the ridge, 
the eye is led down sweeping streets of stately 
architecture to villas and woods that fill the lower 
ground and fringe the shore ; to the bright azure 
belt of the Forth, with its smoking steamer or 
its creeping sail ; beyond, to the shores of Fife, 
soft, blue and flecked with fleeting shadows in 
the keen, clear light of spring, dark purple in 



48 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

the summer heat, tarnished gold in the autumn 
haze; and farther away still, just distinguishable 
on the paler sky, the crest of some distant peak, 
carrying the imagination into the illimitable world. 
Residence in Edinburgh is an education in itself. 
It is perennial, like a play of Shakespeare. Noth- 
ing can stale its infinite variety. Its beauty re- 
freshes one like being in love." 

Such is the estimate of one who had felt the 
poetic inspiration of this scene of varied loveli- 
ness. It is a glowing picture, indeed, not unlike 
that drawn by a greater master, the author of 
Marmiori and Waverley, whose genius was nur- 
tured amid its scenes, and who rejoiced to call 
Dun Edin " mine own romantic town." Here 
Art and Nature conspire with all the glorious 
history to give the world assurance of a finished 
city. Not inappropriately may the lines of Tenny- 
son be applied to this romantic spot : 

" The Past and Present here unite 
Beneath Time's rolling tide, 
As footprints hidden by a brook 
Are seen on either side." 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE PULPIT OF SCOTLAND. 

OF the Scottish pulpit, in the wide fields 
of its influence upon the national charac- 
ter and upon the world's civilization, it is diffi- 
cult to speak here with that fullness which the 
intrinsic importance of the theme demands. Of 
the manifold agencies which had their share in 
working out the historic destiny of Scotland, 
forming the character of her people and giving 
them a strong hold upon the attention of other 
nations, far from being the least potential was 
her Christian pulpit. In truth, it is not going 
too far to say that in all these respects the bold, 
fearless, educated and evangelical ministry of 
Scotland, faithful to truth, to duty and to God, 
can be regarded as holding no second place. 
The history of Scotland and her influence upon 
the march of civilization could not have been 
what they were without such a ministry. No 
man can read or faithfully write that history 
without recognizing on every page the power- 
ful guiding hand of the pulpit. 

For more than three hundred years it has been 

4 49 



50 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

a throne of power in the land. It has attained 
an excellence and it has gained an influence over 
the whole home-population, and at the same time 
commanded a respect abroad, not often equaled, 
and certainly never excelled, in other Christian 
countries. It has moulded the national character 
of Scotland and controlled public opinion among 
an intelligent reading people whom it largely, 
more than any other single agency, helped to 
educate. It has for generations made its voice 
heard as an authority in the exposition of God's 
word, in every family of the land, and in the daily 
lives of the people. It has also made that voice 
heard through all the ramifications of private 
business, through the halls of literature, science 
and philosophy, as well as in all the departments 
of the public service. It has been, and it still 
is, one of the essential factors in all the practical 
problems of popular education. Its influence has 
been felt for good not alone within the narrow 
boundaries of her eastern and western shores, 
but in all lands where the Anglo-Saxon tongue 
has been. Scotland could not exist without her 
pulpit: she would no more be Scotland. 

From John Knox down to Alexander Duff, 
not to speak of the living, it is a long and illus- 
trious succession which in all the greatest ele- 
ments of evangelical preaching will compare 
favorably with the ablest ministry of any age or 
of any nation. It has been a ministry distin- 



THE PULPIT OF SCOTLAND. 5 I 

guished for self-sacrificing zeal, conscientious loy- 
alty to truth, strong common sense, energy and 
decision of character, unshrinking devotion to 
principle in the discharge of duty, and not un- 
frequently in the case of its leaders possessed 
of learning, culture, philosophy and eloquence 
fully equal to any in the world. It has been emi- 
nently wise and conservative, and at the same 
time eminently practical and aggressive. It has 
through all the ages felt itself in possession of 
the true word of God and entrusted by divine 
appointment with a true mission to man ; nor has 
it ever shrunk, through fear or favor, from declar- 
ing to men what it conceived to be the whole 
counsel of God, whether men would hear or 
forbear to hear. John Knox, with his majestic 
intellect, his heart of energy, his will of ada- 
mant, his tongue of fire, may be regarded as the 
very founder and model of its peculiar style. He 
was himself, both in character and in action, the 
most fitting representative of its earlier period. 
He was the man for the times, and no man less 
highly endowed in all the attributes of intellect- 
ual and spiritual manhood could have stood in 
his place and accomplished his work. No man 
ever more thoroughly impressed his own charac- 
ter upon a people and upon a ministry than did 
Knox upon the pulpit and the people of Scot- 
land. The Presbyterian Church of to-day in 
every part of Christendom is proud to acknowl- 



52 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

edge Knox as a leader and a champion of the 
truth who performed for Scotland a work not 
inferior to that accomplished by the great Re- 
formers on the Continent. 

As a body, the Scottish clergy throughout the 
succession have been characterized not so much 
for the graces of a finished oratory as for the 
greater gifts of profound thought, massive learn- 
ing, sound doctrine, evangelical zeal and impas- 
sioned energy. As a class, they have been 
marked by what was called " ingeniwn perfervi- 
dum Scotorum!' They have been earnest, thought- 
ful, conscientious men — men who felt that they 
had a mission from God, a work to do, and they 
were " straitened till it was accomplished." They 
have aimed to make their mark upon the men of 
their times, nor have they failed to do so. The 
grand distinction of the Scottish pulpit through 
every epoch has been "truth before beauty" — 
what to say rather than how to say it. Solid 
matter has been everything ; method, a thing of 
minor consequence. The preaching has there- 
fore been at all times instructive, practical, script- 
ural, experimental, discriminating, theological, 
and not unfrequently logical, philosophical and 
learned. This all-important attribute of strength 
and power shone forth in all the great preachers 
of the early period, who seemed to catch their 
inspiration from the heroic example of Knox. It 
was exemplified in the preaching of the learned 



THE PULPIT OF SCOTLAND. 53 

and noble John Erskine of Dun ; in James and 
Andrew Melville, the heroic compeers of Knox; 
in the eloquent Alexander Henderson, the gifted 
young George Gillespie, the saintly Samuel Ruth- 
erford — the three commissioners of the Scottish 
Church at the famous Westminster Assembly of 
1643. It was illustrated in the preaching of the 
earnest John Welch and Robert Bruce, in David 
Dickson of Irvine and John Livingstone of Shotts, 
a single sermon of the latter being instrumental in 
converting five hundred souls. The same lofty 
style of spiritual power was manifested in the 
pulpits of the noble martyrs James Guthrie and 
James Renwick. 

It would be tedious to recount the shining list 
of their successors of a later day — to tell of Ralph 
and Ebenezer Erskine, of John McLaurin and 
Robert Walker, of Thomas McCree and Andrew 
Thompson, the accomplished John Logan, the 
elegant Hugh Blair, of James Hamilton of Lon- 
don and John Witherspoon of our own Revolu- 
tionary period. Each of these memorable names 
was a tower of strength in its day. The pulpit 
of Hamilton in London and the presidency 
of Witherspoon in America may be taken as 
types of a large class of distinguished men, who, 
after winning a just renown in the land that gave 
them birth, were enabled to carry the influence 
of that land abroad and to accomplish a still 
grander mission in the countries of their adop- 



54 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

tion. And how shall we describe the learning, 
the scholarly culture, the Christian philosophy, 
the statesmanship and sagacity, the burning elo- 
quence and zeal, of Candlish and Cunningham, 
Buchanan and Bonar, Guthrie and Chalmers, the 
leaders of that memorable disruption of 1843 that 
gave to Scotland a free Church for ever delivered 
from State intrusion, and to the world one of the 
most impressive examples of moral heroism in 
all history — that of five hundred ministers of the 
gospel in a body, representing the Christian peo- 
ple of half the realm, choosing to renounce all 
the honors and the incomes of a Church Estab- 
lishment rather than swerve a hair'sbreadth from 
the clear line of conscience. The olden days 
of allegiance to " Christ's crown and covenant " 
had witnessed nothing sublimer than this mod- 
ern spectacle of the Assembly of 1843 at Edin- 
burgh. 

Who was Thomas Chalmers, the leader of this 
great movement, but another and nobler Knox 
brought to the front by the stern exigences of 
those recent times, only melted by love, refined 
by wider culture, expanded by the larger liberty, 
the broader science, the warmer sympathies, the 
more catholic spirit and the higher civilization 
of the nineteenth century? We venerate the 
name and the work of Knox and all the worthies 
of his day, but in the lofty grandeur of his charac- 
ter, in the world-wide sweep of his charity and in 



THE PULPIT OF SCOTLAND. 55 

the soul-earnestness of his beseeching eloquence 
no pulpit of any age or of any country since apos- 
tolic times has probably produced a greater name 
and a higher type of preacher than Thomas Chal- 
mers. 

Where in the annals of modern missions can 
be found higher examples of heroic devotion to 
the cause of Christ and of philanthropic self- 
surrender to the good of men than those which 
shine forth in the lives of the Scottish mission- 
aries of the last fifty years, Robert Moffat and 
David Livingstone in Africa, John Wilson and 
Alexander Duff in India, fitting representatives 
of the noble band ? If their names do not ap- 
pear on the bright roll of the pulpit in the home- 
field, it is only because with apostolic zeal they 
had chosen to carry the gospel to the perishing 
and to spend their lives on foreign shores. But 
in influence and in power it was the Scottish 
pulpit still, only transplanted to distant climes. 
Their glorious record is on high : they have 
rested from their labors, and their works do 
follow them. They have impressed their char- 
acters on the people for whom they toiled never- 
more to be effaced. Their names are precious as 
household memories among the tribes of the Dark 
Continent and among the converts of Calcutta and 
Bombay. All the world knows how well they 
toiled and how nobly they died for the people 
of those distant regions. They were pioneers, 



56 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

and they laid foundations that shall be the basis 
of civilizations yet to follow. In learning, cult- 
ure, philosophy and burning eloquence some 
of them — as Alexander Duff — would have graced 
any pulpit or any university chair in the mother- 
country. Indeed, the General Assembly of the 
Free Church in Edinburgh never honored itself 
more than when, in 185 1, on one of his visits to 
his native land, the venerable Alexander Duff, 
with all the scars of veteran service upon him, 
though still enthusiastic and eloquent as ever, 
was elected by acclamation to the moderatorship 
of that august body. The next year he visited 
the United States and electrified our churches by 
the splendor of his eloquence. 

At the opening of the present century Claudius 
Buchanan, a native of Glasgow, was already in 
Bengal, where he spent a long and active life 
exploring the country, translating the Scriptures 
into the language of Hindostan and laying the 
foundations of Christian missions. It was in 
1829 that Dr. Duff was sent to Calcutta by the 
Church of Scotland, being the first Protestant 
missionary ever appointed by any national Es- 
tablished Church. His advent in that great capi- 
tal formed a new departure in the missionary 
work. He lived to see the great college for the 
education through the English tongue of the 
higher classes of Hindoo youth which he estab- 
lished there attended by thousands of pupils 



THE PULPIT OF SCOTLAND. 57 

and forming a landmark in the conduct of mis- 
sions to the more civilized heathen. Perhaps no 
Scotsman of this century has done a grander 
work in any land than this great man did at Cal- 
cutta. And almost equal commendation may be 
accorded to the similar career at Bombay of John 
Wilson — a man of kindred spirit and attainments, 
who was also made moderator of the Free Church 
General Assembly on one of his return-visits to 
Scotland. 

Thus has the Scottish pulpit through its great 
missionaries been sending its influence around 
the globe. In the vast populations of paganism 
it has kindled the lights of education, of high 
culture, of free thought, of science and liberty — 
in a word, of Christian civilization, the noblest 
civilization known to mankind. These lights can 
no more be extinguished than can the onward 
progress of the race be arrested. What has 
been done in Asia has also been done in Aus- 
tralia, in New Zealand and in Africa. The name 
of David Livingstone has been written across the 
centre of the Dark Continent as was that of his 
predecessor and father-in-law, Robert Moffat, over 
South Africa. Livingstone must henceforth stand 
among the greatest discoverers of the century, as 
he is one of its most daring and heroic mission- 
aries. In philanthropy and in all that constitutes 
the true missionary spirit he will hold equal rank 
with Vanderkemp and Moffat in Africa, with 



58 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

Henry Martyn in Persia, and Judson in Burmah, 
with Gutzlaff and Morrison in China. And he 
has written his name also amid the stars of mod- 
ern geographical service. Scotland has given 
many names to science ; his is one which be- 
longs alike to philanthropy. His long and toil- 
some career in Central Africa, surrounded by 
savages and the dangers of the most pestilential 
climates, shut out so long from all the sweets 
of home and native land, is one of the great sig- 
nificant facts of the age. It shows what men will 
dare for truth and love. It shows, too, how heroi- 
cally such men can die. 



CHAPTER VII. 

SCOTLAND'S LITERATURE AND AUTHORSHIP. 

NO account of Scotland's influence on the 
world in the general advance of civilization 
would be complete without some notice of her 
literature and her authorship. It is here, per- 
haps, that her educational and elevating influence 
comes most distinctly into view and is most gen- 
erally appreciated. It is by her public press, not 
less than by her sacred pulpit, that Scotland has 
spread her opinions before the reading world and 
become to a large extent a leader of its thought 
and a teacher of its youth. By her books, her 
public presses, her world-admired authors, Scot- 
land's influence has gone largely into the educa- 
tion not only of the British nation, but of the 
whole English-speaking race. It is at least one 
of the potential factors in the problem of the 
education and the right direction of this now 
most prominent and influential of all civilized 
races. 

At this point, however, our survey widens into 
a field almost illimitable. Who is competent to 
bring into one brief sketch the literary, scientific, 

59 



60 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

political, educational and religious authorship of 
the last two centuries of Scottish history ? In 
nothing has this small country been more pre- 
eminently distinguished than in that brilliant 
galaxy of authorship which stretches its starry 
belt across the whole literary firmament. In every 
department of literature, science, art, invention, 
philosophy, her writers have risen to the first 
rank and sent their influence to the ends of the 
earth. Her text-books of philosophy, theology, 
political, legal and medical science, education and 
reform, have found their way into the schools of 
all English-speaking Christendom ; while the great 
periodical magazines and reviews have helped to 
form the opinions, to shape the thinking and to 
direct the practical administration of all nations. 
Scotland has thus become for generations past a 
" city set on a hill whose light could not be hid." 
That tremendous energy of character which 
through all the early ages spent itself in wast- 
ing wars and carnage, as soon as the sword was 
sheathed at the Union of 1707, took the direction 
of peaceful invention, of useful industry, of practi- 
cal discovery, of scientific research, of philosoph- 
ical inquiry, of poetic inspiration, of historical 
romance, of educational reform, of political en- 
franchisement, of religious discussion, of elegant 
letters, absorbing and developing the best-culti- 
vated intellect of the country. And now for a 
hundred and seventy years this highly-cultivated 



LITERATURE AND AUTHORSHIP. 6 1 

and thoroughly-disciplined intellectual and moral 
force — equal, probably, in native ability to any 
that ever existed in any land — has been expend- 
ing all its resources in productions and achieve- 
ments that not unfrequently evince the highest 
triumphs of genius. Military glory has been ex- 
changed for the civic arm and the laurel-wreath, 
and Scotland's pen has become mightier than the 
sword. 

Thus modern Scotland, in place of a home of 
warriors, has grown to be the abode of an indus- 
trious, thriving, wealthy and happy people send- 
ing their well-trained and God-fearing sons and 
daughters into all the colonies of the British crown 
and into all new countries around the globe, there 
to make independent and happy homes for them- 
selves. Scotland herself is filled with such homes, 
from the palatial residences of noble and gentry 
down to the humblest dwellings of her Christian 
yeomanry. It was of such Christian homes, where 
her humblest cottagers ply their daily toil and eat 
their frugal meal, that the greatest of her national 
bards sang : 

" From scenes like these Old Scotia's grandeur springs, 
That makes her loved at home, revered abroad ; 
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, 
An honest man's the noblest work of God." 

One crowning glory of Scotland — that which 
gives her moral power at home and educational 



62 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

influence all around the globe — is her Christian 
literature and her illustrious authorship. Her 
literature is for the most part baptized with the 
spirit of the gospel and consecrated at the altar 
of Christ. No literature of any land has been 
purer, more elevating, more inspiring in all its 
aims and influences, for none has ever been more 
fully pervaded with the very life and character 
of Christianity. The deep inspiration that comes 
from the Bible, alike pervading pulpit and press, 
is the true source of that influence which has 
made Scotland so potential in the education 
and civilization of recent times. 

Hugh Miller somewhere remarks that Eng- 
land has reached a higher rank of authorship 
than Scotland ever attained — that Scotland has 
produced no Shakespeare, no Milton, no Bacon, 
no Sir Isaac Newton, no John Locke. Is not 
this an overstretch of candor against his own 
country in the honest Scotsman? With as much 
truth it may be said that England has produced 
no Burns, no Walter Scott, no James Watt, no 
Sir William Hamilton, no Mary Somerville. It 
is difficult and unfair to offset the children of 
genius against one another. Each has his own 
high and divine vocation ; each is supreme in his 
own line of excellence. England to this day has 
no Hugh Miller; Scotland never had but one, 
and may never have another. John Knox and 
Thomas Chalmers, Robert Burns and Walter 



LITERATURE AND AUTHORSHIP. 63 

Scott, Mary Somerville and Hugh Miller, David 
Livingstone and Alexander Duff, belong to that 
class of characters which we describe as sin gene- 
ris. They cannot well be compared with others, 
but each is in his own order unique and supreme. 
As we go to England to find the highest Shake- 
speare and the sublimest Milton the race has pro- 
duced, we go to Scotland to see the noblest Burns 
and the greatest Scott. Incomparable Robert 
Burns, as distinguished in song as Bruce was in 
battle ; the child of poverty, the child of genius, 
the child of nature ; the poet of humanity, the 
man of feeling, the interpreter of the common 
people, the artist of the soul ; loved, honored, 
idolized, by all Scotsmen, at home and abroad, 
as no poet was ever loved before ; his memory 
as fresh and green to-day in the hearts of his 
countrymen as it was three-quarters of a century 
ago; notwithstanding all his faults and foibles a 
true representative of the national heart and char- 
acter, and therefore entitled to wear, as he does 
wear, the laureate-crown of Scotland ! 

No name in literature perhaps has won a more 
profound and cordial homage for the genius of 
the man, and at the same time a deeper sympathy 
for the errors and misfortunes that so beset and 
darkened his pathway. How truly he struck all 
the deepest and tenderest chords of feeling in his 
matchless songs ! And how have the hearts of 
all civilized men who read his mother-tongue re- 



64 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

sponded in loving admiration to those songs ever 
since he, the unfriended ploughman, first struck 
his inspiring lyre ! As truly of him as of Byron 
might his countryman Pollok have said : 

" He touched his harp, and nations heard entranced." 

Since the close of this unhappy life there is 
scarcely an English or American writer of any 
prominence in literature who has not paid a lov- 
ing tribute to the memory of Burns. His un- 
adorned and simple verse has been an inspiration 
of beauty and of love to the young poets of all 
the generations that have followed. The humble 
dwelling in Ayreshire where he first saw the light 
and the substantial monument that overlooks the 
Doon have been a sort of shrine where the trav- 
elers of all lands have come to attest their hom- 
age for his genius and their appreciation of the 
noble sentiments of truth and goodness that 
adorned his verse. It was in fitting recognition 
of the genius which had conferred such honor 
upon Scotland that his countrymen long after his 
death erected on one of the hills of their ancient 
capital a stately and imposing monument to Burns. 
In after-years another prominent site of the city 
was crowned in like manner with the magnificent 
monument of Scott. Edinburgh wears them both 
proudly among her crown-jewels. Poets, orators, 
divines and statesmen in all civilized lands have 
found the name of Burns a fruitful theme, and 



LITERATURE AND AUTHORSHIP. 6$ 

vied with one another in throwing a chaplet of 
honor on his brow. In recent times his distin- 
guished countrymen Thomas Carlyle and Princi- 
pal Shairp have written, each with clear discrim- 
ination, and yet with eminently just appreciation, 
loving monographs on his life and character. 
Nothing, perhaps, in all Mr. Carlyle's numerous 
writings is more admirable than this sketch of 
the peasant-poet. 

What achievements in verse beyond those so 
early won might he not have reached had i he 
but escaped those evil influences which at &st 
overmastered his splendid powers and brought 
him to a premature grave ere he had passed 
the meridian of life ! But even as it is he 
sang so sweetly, so truly, so gloriously, as to 
embalm his name for ever in the hearts of his 
countrymen and make that name a familiar house- 
hold word in every habitation of the English- 
speaking race. That name is to-day one of the 
honored and enduring names of all literature. 
That name, despite the foibles of the poet, is a 
potential influence for humanity, for freedom, 
for universal brotherhood and good-will among 
men and nations, for right and justice, honesty 
and truth. It is a talisman to charm the world 
and make old Scotia's power felt wherever the 
foot of man has trod. 

Who stands next among her canonized bards ? 
Unquestionably, Walter Scott. His, however, is 



66 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

a double diadem. To the laurel-crown of po- 
esy is added the amaranthine chaplet of his- 
torical romance, and the later outshines the earlier 
glory. Genius is the most wonderful endowment 
of man. It is hard to say what genius cannot do. 
It is not often given to human genius to achieve 
the highest excellence in two departments of lit- 
erature so distinct as those of poetic numbers and 
prose fiction, yet Walter Scott, apparently at a 
bound and without an effort, won them both. 
As the new and romantic bard of the North he 
sang his Lay of the Last Minstrel, his Lady of the 
Lake and Marmion in strains so sweet and joyous, 
and anon so martial and heroic, so true to nature 
and to Scotland, that the world heard entranced. 
And then, when he stood on these poetic heights, 
he purposed in his heart to take another step. As 
the author of Waverley — the " Great Unknown " 
— he poured forth in rapid succession that bril- 
liant series of historical romances and life-fictions 
which for power of delineation, fascinating interest 
and universal popularity find scarcely a parallel in 
the annals of literature. All Scotland hailed him 
as the great enchanter ; all the world recognized 
him as standing single and supreme in a depart- 
ment of literature which his own genius may be 
said to have created, and in which to this day he 
stands without an equal amongst his successors 
and imitators. He made a new era for Scotland. 
He opened Scotland to all the world as it had 



LITERATURE AND AUTHORSHIP. 6j 

never been opened before. He threw a new 
charm over Scottish history and over Scottish 
scenery. The world read and admired; to this 
day it has not ceased to read and admire. Trav- 
elers from all lands rushed in to gaze upon the 
scenes of grandeur and beauty depicted on his 
pages. In literary history no man, perhaps, has 
ever done so much by his pen for a country as 
Scott did for Scotland — so much to exalt the 
national character and make it known to all the 
world. It has been well said that Scotland is 
now Scott's-land. And Abbotsford is the culmi- 
nating glory of it all. 'Tis a fine tribute to the 
character of Walter Scott which is given by 
Alexander Smith : " Never was an author so 
popular as Scott, and never was popularity worn 
so lightly and gracefully. In his own heart he- 
did not value it highly, and he cared more for his 
plantations at Abbotsford than for his poems and 
his novels. He was loved by everybody. George 
IV. on his visit to the northern kingdom declared 
that Scott was the man he most wished to see. 
He was a great, simple, sincere, warm-hearted 
man. The mass of his greatness takes away 
from our sense of its height. He is the light 
in which Scotland is now seen. He has pro- 
claimed all over the world Scottish story, Scot- 
tish humor, Scottish feeling and Scottish virtue." 
There can be no doubt that the literature of 
Scotland took a new departure with the writings 



68 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

of this gifted man. In him the North Briton * 
became a very cosmopolitan whose teeming pro- 
ductions commanded the admiration of the world. 
The "author of Waveyley" belonged not alone 
to Scotland, but to literature — to all lands, all 
classes, all generations, of men. When the veil 
of mystery that had so long concealed his identity 
was at length lifted, the noble character of the 
man was as conspicuous as the consummate ge- 
nius of the author. 

No writer of modern times has done more to 
revive and to keep alive the spirit of past ages 
than Sir Walter Scott. In this respect he has 
been the benefactor of the world. He has thrown 
over history a light of romance in which the young 
and the aged of each generation since his time 
have continued to read it with new interest. 
This he has done by both his poetry and his 
historical novels, in all of which, unlike many 
of his successors, he invariably adhered to the 
most exalted standard of virtue and wrote n£ 
line which the moralist could wish to blot. 

Able critics like Professor Shairp have pointed 
out the striking resemblance between his longer 
romantic poems, such as the Lay, Lady of the 
Lake and Marmion, and the heroic poems of 
Homer. In these national ballads of Scott there 
is not a little of the life and fire as well as of the 
descriptive energy of the highest epic poetry, and 
the true Homeric spirit of the Iliad is breathed 



LITERATURE -AND AUTHORSHIP. 69 

forth in all his battle-scenes, such as that of 
" Flodden Field," in the last canto of Marmion, 
or that of " Bannockburn" in the Lord of the 
Isles, or even that of " Fitzjames and Roderick 
D'hu," in the Lady of the Lake. Leaving out 
of view the supernatural machinery of the old 
pagan mythology which Homer delighted to in- 
troduce, these spirited pieces of Sir Walter would 
not suffer in comparison with the descriptions of 
the very prince of poets. 

In Professor Shairp's fine little volume on the 
Aspects of Poetry, in speaking of Scott's influence 
on the world, and especially of his wonderful 
power to delight the heart of childhood and youth 
almost beyond any other writer, the author gives 
us the following very suggestive remarks : " Mor- 
alists before now have asked, ' What has Scott 
done by all his singing about battles and knights 
and chivalry but merely amuse his fellow-men ? 
Has he in any way really elevated and improved 
them ?' It might be enough to answer this ques- 
tion by saying that of all writers, in verse or prose, 
he has done most to make us understand history, 
to let in light and sympathy upon a wide range 
of ages which had become dumb and meaningless 
to men, and which but for him might have con- 
tinued so still. There must be something high 
or noble in that which can so take unsophisticated 
hearts. In his later days Scott is reported to have 
asked Laidlaw what he thought the moral influ- 



JO SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

ence of his writings had been. ' Laidlaw well re- 
plied that his works were the delight of the young, 
and that to have so reached their hearts was sure- 
ly a good work to have done.' Scott was affected 
almost to tears, as well he might be. Again, not 
the young only, but the old, those who have kept 
themselves most childlike, who have carried the 
boy's heart farthest with them into life, — they have 
loved Scott's poetry even to the end. Something 
of this, no doubt, may be attributed to the pleas- 
ure of reverting in age to the things that have 
delighted our boyhood. But would the best and 
purest men have cared to do this if the things 
which delighted their boyhood had not been 
worthy ? It is the great virtue of Scott's poet- 
ry, and of his novels also, that, quite forgetting 
self, they describe man and outward nature broad- 
ly, truly, genially as they are. All contemporary 
poetry — indeed, all contemporary literature — goes 
to work in the exactly opposite direction, shaping 
men and things after patterns self-originated from 
within, describing and probing human feelings 
and motives with an analysis so searching that 
all manly impulse withers before it and single- 
hearted straightforwardness becomes a thing im- 
possible. Against this whole tendency of modern 
poetry and fiction, so weakening, so morbidly self- 
conscious, so unhealthily introspective, what more 
effective antidote than the bracing atmosphere of 
Homer and Shakespeare and Scott ?" 



LITERATURE AND AUTHORSHIP. 7 1 

This able and accomplished writer closes his 
justly-appreciative criticism upon his gifted coun- 
tryman with the following passage, which may 
be commended not only to Scotsmen, but to all 
admirers of the character and genius of Scott 
throughout the world : " To have awakened 
and kept alive in an artificial and too money- 
loving age that character of mind which we call 
' romantic,' which by transformation can become 
something so much beyond itself, is, even from 
the severest moral point of view, no mean merit. 
To higher than this few poets can lay claim. But 
let the critics praise him, or let them blame. It 
matters not : his reputation will not wane, but 
will grow w ith time. Therefore we do well to 
make much of Walter Scott. He is the only 
Homer who has been vouchsafed to Scotland — 
I might almost say, to modern Europe. He came 
at the latest hour when it was possible for a great 
epic minstrel to be born, and the altered condition 
of the world will not admit of another." 

We can scarcely agree with so sweeping a vati- 
cination. There are yet more things in heaven 
and earth than are known to our philosophy or 
sung by any minstrelsy. The writer forgets that 
there is a great Western world, with its teeming 
millions and its rising civilizations and its unfath- 
omed capacities, that as yet has had but little his- 
tory, still less philosophy, and is only collecting 
the materials for its epics. The possibilities of 



72 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

the future on this side of the Atlantic are still 
large. 

After Burns and Scott, there is a brilliant array 
of poets and literary writers whose names are 
household words with all who speak the English 
tongue — Smollett and Falconer; MacPherson, 
Boswell and Beattie ; Thomson, sweet singer of 
the Seasons ; Campbell, author of the Pleasures 
of Hope ; Graham, the bard of the Sabbath; 
Mackenzie, the Scottish Addison, author of the 
Man of Feeling ; Professor Wilson, of the Lights 
and Shadows of Scottish Life ; Robert Poll ok, 
of the Course of Time ; James Montgomery, the 
sweet psalmist of the Church ; Motherwell and 
Aytoun : Jane Porter, Joanna Baillie, Allan Ram- 
say, George Macdonald, John Lockhart, Lord 
Jeffrey and the great reviewers. 

Nor has the Muse of History withheld her 
wreath from Scottish brows. The historical wri- 
ters of Scotland, in the fullness of their research 
and in the splendor of their diction, hold a rank 
not excelled by any of the great historians of 
modern times. High on the rolls of fame stand 
the great names of George Buchanan, William 
Robertson, David Hume, Sir Archibald Alison, 
Thomas Carlyle and Sir James Mackintosh, the 
latter to his brilliant genius as a profound phil- 
osophical historian adding the still more brilliant 
reputation of the jurist, the statesman and the 
orator. As an advocate at the bar and as a de- 



LITERATURE AND AUTHORSHIP. 73 

bater in the British Parliament, like his country- 
men and predecessors on the same field, Lord 
Erskine and Chief-Justice Mansfield, he won his 
way to the foremost rank of greatness in an age 
of great men. This distinguished trio — Erskine, 
Mansfield and Mackintosh — may be taken as the 
representatives of a class of North Britons who, 
finding Edinburgh too small for their genius, have 
pressed their way to the metropolis of the empire, 
and from the high seats of power in Parliament, 
on the bench and in the Cabinet have made their 
names and their influence felt as far as Britain's 
power is felt. In eloquence, learning and states- 
manship there are no greater names than those 
of the Scotch trio — Erskine, Mansfield and Mack- 
intosh. They are the full-grown compeers and 
equals of Chatham, Fox and Burke, and on this 
high ground of eloquence Scotland stands side 
by side with England. 

Of the writers just named, some might almost 
be called the oracles of literary opinion, so great 
was the reputation they gained at home and so 
wide their celebrity abroad through their varied 
productions. Such was the case with the learned 
and at that time popular historians Hume, Rob- 
ertson and Alison, read all over England and 
America. So was it with the eloquent and bril- 
liant Sir James Mackintosh, always the advocate 
of popular rights. Equally popular and fascinat- 
ing in their day were the writings of John Wilson 



74 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

(" Christopher North ") and the critics of the 
Edinburgh Review and Blackwood 's Magazine, 
and a host of young writers, some of Scotch and 
some of English birth, like Lord Jeffrey, Henry 
Brougham, Sydney Smith, Thomas de Quincey, 
Thomas Macaulay, John Lockhart and Mackin- 
tosh, who either in person gathered around Edin- 
burgh as their literary metropolis or through 
the pages of the great Reviews held periodical 
communication with the reading public of the 
world. 

In this connection one distinguished name de- 
serves a more distinct notice as filling a large 
space in the world's thought during much of 
the present century. It is that of Thomas Car- 
lyle, a Scotchman by birth and education, who 
spent the larger portion of his protracted life at 
Chelsea, near London, where by his numerous 
writings he achieved the widest literary renown 
as a profound and original thinker. He lived in 
a circle of men of letters of the highest order, 
where his brilliant genius was fully appreciated, 
and probably no one of them all during his whole 
career obtained a stronger hold upon the world's 
attention. His first important work, the Sartor 
Resartus of some fifty years ago, introduced him 
to the public as a remarkable writer, and his suc- 
ceeding volumes — Heroes and Hero-Worship, The 
Life and Letters of Cromwell, The French Revolu- 
tion, Frederick the Great, Miscellanies and Latter- 



LITERATURE AND AUTHORSHIP. ?$ 

Day Pamphlets — but served to confirm the public 
estimate of his great ability. His writings have 
been read around the globe. They have been a 
power among all civilized men of our times, and 
it may be questioned whether any single writer 
of the century has exerted a wider and deeper 
influence over the minds of men, especially of 
young men. Some of these writings have be- 
come a part of the permanent literature of the 
age, and, though there has come a reaction 
against his influence as an oracle of opinion, 
they will no doubt long continue to be read with 
interest. 

Carlyle wrote no poems ; he rather held the 
verse-makers in contempt, as he did so many 
other classes. Still, his writings have some of 
the noblest elements of poetry. He has been 
styled a great prose-poet, though he is far from 
being a fine prose-writer. He sets all the laws 
of good English at defiance and sacrifices every 
element of grace and beauty on the altar of giant 
strength. In vigor and impassioned fervor no 
one ever went beyond him. His countryman 
Professor Shairp, in an admirable critique on his 
genius, says : " Carlyle's book on the French 
Revolution has been called the great modern 
epic ; and so it is — an epic as true and germane 
to this age as Homer's was to his." As to relig- 
ious opinion, it is difficult to say what Mr. Car- 
lyle held — if, indeed, he held anything firmly. 



?6 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

One of his contemporaries not unaptly describes 
him as "a Puritan who had lost his religion." 
He would appear, however, never to have given 
up the two fundamental beliefs in God and im- 
mortality. Unquestionably, his writings inculcate 
throughout a stern and high morality as set forth 
in the Christian Scriptures. Professor Shairp 
says: "Though the superstructure of Puritanism 
had disappeared, the original superstructure re- 
mained : the stern, stoical Calvinism of his nature 
was the foundation on which all his views were 
built. His religious faith, if we may venture to 
trace it, would seem to be the result of three 
things — his own strong, stern nature, his early 
Calvinistic training, and these two transformed 
by the after-influx of German transcendentalism 
tempered by Goethism." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCOTLAND. 

IT is in the two closely-affiliated realms of 
science and philosophy that the intellectual 
education and development of a nation may be 
said to attain its higher levels. To this needs 
only to be added the equally important moral 
and religious development to make the education 
complete and the work of advancement satisfac- 
tory and perfect. Without claiming for the Scot- 
tish people any superior excellence over other 
civilized communities in these respects, it is 
enough now to say that during the past two cen- 
turies their progress has been manifest, and they 
have now reached these higher levels of modern 
cultivated thought. 

In the wide fields of invention and discovery 
and of the natural and physical sciences the sons 
of Scotland have ever marched with the vanguard 
in the grand army of human progress. From 
James Watt, the constructor of the steam-engine, 
and John Napier, the inventor of logarithms, and 
Colin Maclaurin's great treatise On Fluxions, 
down to Sir David Brewster the astronomer, 

77 



78 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

Playfair the geometrician, Sir Roderic Murchison 
the geographer, Sir Charles Lyell and Hugh Mil- 
ler the geologists, and from the early African trav- 
elers Mungo Park and Clapperton down to her 
great missionaries Robert Moffat and David Liv- 
ingstone in Africa, Claudius Buchanan and Alex- 
ander Duff in India, — little Scotland has borne her 
full share in the great work of scientific investi- 
gation and discovery, and in the still greater work 
of the world's evangelization. Her sons of science, 
her Christian civilizers, her heroic missionaries, 
have " stood before kings ; they have not stood 
before mean men." 

In the advancement of the inductive sciences, 
as well as in that of intellectual and moral phil- 
osophy, in Scotland, her great universities bore 
no inconsiderable part. These ancient and hon- 
ored seats of learning, though never so richly 
endowed as those of England, were from their 
early foundations the radiating centres of light 
and influence to the whole Scottish people. 
Around them gathered the most learned and 
noted men of the times. In them were edu- 
cated the young men who devoted themselves 
to scientific research or philosophic inquiry, and 
who in after-life were called back, crowned with 
honors, to fill the professor's chair in their alma 
mater, and from these centres of learning to send 
forth to the world the matured results of their 
investigations. Scotland has been highly favored 



SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. Jg 

with such seats of learning, having had four of 
them from early times — the two principal ones in 
the two chief cities of the realm, the renowned 
universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and the 
other two in the ancient cities of St. Andrews 
and Aberdeen, not so widely known, but still 
ancient, honorable and influential in their share 
of the scientific, classical, philosophical, literary 
and theological training of the successive gene- 
rations of her youth. Nor has she from the foun- 
dation of these great schools ever been without 
an influence, both direct and indirect, upon the 
world at large. Through these schools, back to 
their origin, Scotland has been to a large extent 
the educator of the youth of other Christian 
lands. Into their academic halls from year to 
year have come the sons of the wealthy, from 
England, from Ireland, from America, from all 
the British dependencies abroad, and even from 
the Continent, to receive the higher culture of 
science, theology, law, medicine, philosophy. Es- 
pecially in the earlier history of our own coun- 
try, when institutions of learning were in compar- 
ative infancy here, was this educational influence 
of Scotland manifest in our pulpits and in all the 
learned professions. Here, from the lips of the 
most eminent professors, did many of our youth 
go to receive the finishing instructions of their 
life-work. And thither still do some of them go. 
One of the distinguished men first named, the 



80 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

celebrated mathematician and philosopher Colin 
Maclaurin, was successively connected with three 
of these noted schools. He studied at Glasgow, 
where he took the degree of Master of Arts at 
the age of fifteen. He then obtained the math- 
ematical chair at Marischal College, Aberdeen, 
at the age of seventeen. At nineteen he was 
made a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1725, 
at the age of twenty-seven, he was elected pro- 
fessor of mathematics at Edinburgh, where his 
lectures contributed much to raise the character 
of that university as a school of science. A con- 
troversy with Bishop Berkely led to the publica- 
tion of his Treatise on Fluxions. 

Of all the Scottish savans of the last century, 
the one who has probably acquired the widest 
and most enduring fame was Adam Smith, the 
author of the celebrated treatise on The Wealth 
of Nations. Before this book appeared he had 
already won a high reputation as an acute thinker 
in his chair of logic, and afterward of moral phil- 
osophy, at the University of Glasgow, having 
published two important works — The Theory of 
the Moral Sentiments and a Dissertation on Lan- 
guages. The appearance of his Inquiry into the 
Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations at once 
established his higher fame. It constituted a new 
departure in economical science. It revolution- 
ized the public opinion of the world on many 
questions of trade and commerce. It broke down 



SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 8 1 

a thousand ancient prejudices and gave a new 
impulse to thought and a new direction to com- 
mercial enterprise. It demonstrated how both 
individuals and nations could grow rich without 
despoiling or interfering with each other. It 
entitled the author to rank as a pioneer — if not, 
indeed, the very founder — of political economy 
as a separate branch of human knowledge. He 
raised it to a position which it has never lost — 
of being one of the most important of all the 
modern sciences. His profound treatise became 
a text-book of instruction in many of the higher 
schools and colleges of all lands. It gave to the 
doctrine of free trade a prominence which it has 
held to this day among the deep problems of 
political economy. After ail the advances of a 
century, the name of Adam Smith still -stands as 
an authority among the greatest thinkers of the 
world. 

The mathematical and physical sciences in 
Scotland during the same century were well rep- 
resented at her universities by the distinguished 
names of Robert Simson, James Hutton and John 
Playfair, whose learned researches, given to the 
public in many forms of publication, contributed 
not a little to the general advancement of knowl- 
edge at home and abroad. 

The present century has furnished a bright 
cluster of scientific names in Scotland, contribut- 
ing their full share to that exalted estimation in 



82 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

which scientific pursuits are now held in all civ- 
ilized nations. Of these was Hugh Miller, a self- 
taught man from the stone-quarries and a master 
of pure English diction, author of the Old Red 
Sandstone and the Testimony of the Rocks, the 
devotee and the martyr of scientific investigation. 
He brought to the elucidation of these studies 
a fresh and brilliant literary ability almost as 
untutored and spontaneous as that of his im- 
mortal countryman Robert Burns. Seldom has 
science in any country been made so clear, and 
so attractive to the popular mind as in his learned 
yet fascinating pages. Another eminent scientist 
of Scotland contemporary with Hugh Miller was 
Sir Charles Lyell, whose popular geological writ- 
ings and extended geological tours in many lands 
did much to develop his favorite science. The 
honor of knighthood was conferred upon him in 
recognition of the great services he had rendered 
to the cause of scientific knowledge. 

In this honored class stand the great names of 
Sir David Brewster and Sir Roderic Murchison of 
Edinburgh, well worthy, in the value and extent 
of their scientific labors, to be associated with 
the illustrious names of Michael Faraday and 
Sir John Herschel of the same period in London. 
Perhaps no two men of the times have conferred 
greater lustre upon British science than these two 
distinguished North Britons. Sir David Brews- 
ter — inventor of the kaleidoscope, editor of the 



SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 83 

Edinburgh Encyclopedia and the Pliilosophical 
Journal, author of numerous scientific volumes 
covering a wide range of knowledge — lived long 
to adorn his native land by his rare virtues of 
character and by his contributions to science. 
" We love to think of him," says a contemporary, 
" as the experimental philosopher who combined 
in so extraordinary a degree the strictest severity 
of scientific argument and form with a freedom 
of fancy and imagination which lent picturesque- 
ness to all his illustrations and invested his later 
writings especially with an indefinable charm." 
While he lived no intelligent visitor of Edinburgh 
from abroad missed seeing the genial and accom- 
plished Sir David Brewster. Scarcely less dis- 
tinguished is the far-famed geologist and geog- 
rapher Sir Roderic Murchison, the friend of 
Livingstone, president of the Royal Geographical 
Society and of the British Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science. No man living, perhaps, 
has contributed more by his studies and his per- 
sonal exertions to promote geographical science 
in Great Britain and to enkindle a spirit of adven- 
ture among the scientific explorers in distant lands. 
Another distinguished representative of the 
most recent Scottish science is Professor William 
Thomson of the University of Glasgow, one of 
the ablest of living mathematicians and natural 
philosophers. He is the author of many learned 
works and of some brilliant discoveries in sub- 



84 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

marine telegraphy, to which he has devoted much 
research. His name is intimately associated with 
the successful solution of the great and once-dif- 
ficult problem of connecting the two continents 
by the Atlantic cable. By his long-continued 
experiments and investigations he contributed — 
perhaps more than any other one man — to the 
ultimate accomplishment of that great scheme of 
interoceanic communication which now so won- 
derfully binds the world together in thought, and 
so magnificently illustrates the triumph of mod- 
ern science. Whatever of good this practical 
realization of one of the great ideas of our most 
recent science may yet bring to the final triumph 
of Christian civilization among all nations, it is 
not without significance that Scotland, through 
her ancient university and her learned professor, 
has labored in the problem. In the coming glory 
Scotland, though small among the world's great 
potentates and dominions, will be entitled to her 
share. 

In the recent authorship of Scotland the duke 
of Argyle has won a distinguished position by 
several popular works which have been greatly 
admired on both sides of the Atlantic. His 
Reign of Laiv and his Primeval Ma?i — mainly 
contributions to science, but written in a pro- 
found philosophic spirit — have passed through 
many editions, and certainly take rank with the 
ablest works of our times on subjects of this kind. 



SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 85 

He is a thinker and a scholar, showing on every 
page a thorough mastery of the intricate and im- 
portant subjects he discusses. His volumes are 
replete with strong, sound, discriminating thought 
presented in a style of great clearness, reminding 
one of the lucid pages of his countryman Hugh 
Miller. It is refreshing to find the broadest sci- 
entific culture of the age thus combined in an 
author who at every step fills us with a convic- 
tion of his deep earnestness in the quest of truth 
and of his judiciousness in the statement of his 
opinions. The noble author deserves well of his 
country, and by these volumes has made rich 
contributions to the cause of popular science 
and philosophic truth. At its first appearance a 
competent critic pronounced Primeval Man " the 
most clear, graceful, pointed and precise piece of 
ethical reasoning which had been published for a 
quarter of a century." " Its great end is to show 
that it is impossible to pursue any investigation 
of man's history from the purely physical side. 
Its reasoning seems to us absolutely conclusive 
against the upholders of the natural-selection 
theory." 

In his work on the Reign of Law the accom- 
plished author has discussed some of the most 
abstruse and perplexing problems which divide 
the ablest speculative thinkers of our times. The 
great aim of the volume is to show that, while 
law reigns supreme in all the universe through- 



86 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

out mind and matter, its supremacy does not 
exclude a divine Lawgiver : " Creation by law, 
evolution by law, development by law — or, as in- 
cluding all these kindred ideas, the reign of law — 
is nothing but the reign of creative force, directed 
by creative knowledge, worked under the control 
of creative power and in fulfillment of creative 
purpose." 

We scarcely know a finer passage in our recent 
literature than that which occurs at the close of 
this able discussion, where the author vindicates 
the presence and agency of God in all parts of 
this law-governed universe. He says : 

" The superstition which saw in all natural 
phenomena the action of capricious deities was 
not more irrational than the superstition which 
sees in them nothing but the action of invariable 
law. Men have been right, and not wrong, when 
they saw in the facts of nature the variability of 
adjustment even more surely than they saw the 
constancy of force. They were right when they 
identified these phenomena with the phenomena 
of mind. They were right when they regarded 
their own faculty of contrivance as the nearest 
and truest analogy by which the construction of 
the universe can be conceived and its order un- 
derstood. They were right when they regarded 
its arrangements as susceptible of change, and 
when they looked upon a change of will as the 
efficient cause of other changes without number 



SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 8? 

and without end. It was well to feel this by the 
force of instinct ; it is better still to be sure of it in 
the light of reason. It is an immense satisfaction 
to know that the result of logical analysis does 
but confirm the testimony of consciousness and 
run parallel with the primeval traditions of belief. 
It is an unspeakable comfort that when we come 
to close quarters with this vision of invariable law 
seated on the throne of Nature we find it a phan- 
tom and a dream — a mere nightmare of ill-di- 
gested thought and of God's great gift of speech 
abused. We are, after all, what we thought our- 
selves to be. Our freedom is a reality, and not a 
name. Our faculties have, in truth, the relations 
which they seem to have to the economy of na- 
ture. Their action is a real and substantial action 
on the constitution and course of things. The 
laws of nature were not appointed by the great 
Lawgiver to baffle his creatures in the sphere 
of conduct, still less to confound them in the 
region of belief. As parts of an order of things 
too vast to be more than partly understood they 
present, indeed, some difficulties which perplex 
the intellect, and a few also, it cannot be denied, 
which wring the heart. But, on the whole, they 
stand in harmonious relations with the human 
spirit. They come visibly from one pervading 
Mind and express the authority of one endur- 
ing kingdom. As regards the moral ends they 
serve, this too can be clearly seen — that the pur- 



88 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

pose of all natural laws is best fulfilled when they 
are made, as they can be made, the instruments 
of intelligent will and the servants of enlightened 
conscience." 

These able contributions to natural science are 
the more important as coming from one who has 
thus made good his position both as a scientist 
and as a philosopher. They inspire us with 
confidence both by their research and by their 
conservatism. They illustrate how the widest 
scientific culture of the age is still consistent and 
harmonious with all those fundamental ethical 
principles that underlie the Christian system, 
and that distinguish the Scottish philosophy as a 
philosophy of sound reason and Common sense. 
While the noble writer is at home in the fields 
of physical science and does not shrink from 
discussing the deepest ethical and philosophical 
problems, yet, true to the genius of his country, 
he ever stands on solid ground and is never car- 
ried off to the dreamlands of an uncertain meta- 
physical speculation. He can look back upon 
an illustrious ancestry of stern, heroic, fighting 
men. He has here fought a higher and better 
battle. 

Let us turn now to survey another field of 
Scotland's authorship and influence, closely allied 
to that of the natural sciences. It is that of the 
higher intellectual and moral philosophy, or, as 
it may be called, metaphysical speculation. This 



SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 89 

elevated region of abstract logical thought, which 
the educated men of all civilized ages and races 
have cultivated just in proportion as they have 
advanced in knowledge, has not lacked attrac- 
tion for the Scotch. If knowledge is power, then 
thought is power, philosophy is power ; for phil- 
osophy has to deal with thought and with knowl- 
edge as its essential elements. If, as has been 
said, the world is governed by ideas, then phil- 
osophy governs the world of thinking men ; for 
it is philosophy that classifies our ideas, systema- 
tizes our science and gives direction to all the 
great energies and enterprises of educated men. 
In this realm of pure reason, this wide domain 
of intellectual, moral and metaphysical philoso- 
phy, Scotland may be said to have created an 
independent school of her own whose power, 
almost omnipotent at home, has extended its 
modifying influences over all other Christian 
lands. 

In the olden times, as we have seen, the Scots 
were great fighters and dealt hard blows ; in more 
recent times they have been content to fight the 
higher battles of the mind. They have been great 
thinkers, deep thinkers, hard thinkers. They have 
well cultivated the reasoning faculties and sharp- 
ened them by use. They are dialecticians and 
logicians of the first order. In no country in 
the world has its dominant philosophy had more 
to do with the living thought of its people. It 



go SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

has stamped itself upon their character. It has 
been a potential factor in their education. It has 
given a coloring to their whole literature. It has 
gone into the ministrations of the pulpit as no 
other philosophy ever did. In all her history 
Scotland has probably produced no one thing 
which is more distinctly her own, which has ex- 
erted a stronger influence over her leading minds 
or contributed more to make her influence felt and 
respected abroad, than her indigenous, strongly- 
marked and solid philosophy. It has never been 
a philosophy of dreams and fancies, but a philos- 
ophy resting on the fundamental experience and 
axioms of intuition and common sense, the ob- 
served facts of human experience and the clear 
deductions of enlightened reason. This philos- 
ophy, the matured growth of ages, has been 
taught from generation to generation in the four 
great universities, especially in the law and divin- 
ity schools, and has been promulgated to the world 
not only by the- leading reviews and magazines, 
but in many profound systematic treatises. 

By this philosophy, both at home and in for- 
eign lands, Scotland has spoken in a voice as 
potential as it has been decided. There has never 
been much ambiguity in her teaching. With a 
few exceptions like David Hume, the Scottish 
philosophers have in the main uttered but one 
voice and taught one great system. By it they 
have become educators to mankind, and they have 



SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 9 1 

largely led the thinking of the English-speaking 
race both in the Old World and in the New. 
There can be no question that they led it through 
all the colonial period of our own history, and 
that they still lead it both here and in Canada, 
notwithstanding the large influx, during the pres- 
ent century, of the more pretentious schools of 
German and French philosophy. So far as this 
New World can be said to have any one phil- 
osophy which it can claim as its own and call 
" American," it is certainly in its fundamental 
principles much more closely allied to Scotland 
than to Germany or to France. Philosophy, like 
all other departments of human knowledge, is 
progressive and changes both its teachers and 
its text-books from age to age, the old and im- 
perfect systems giving place to the new and im- 
proved methods. So has it been in Scotland. 
Still, there is to-day no sounder philosophy in 
the world than that which has been expounded in 
the writings of Reid and Brown, Abercrombie and 
Dugald Stewart, the brilliant Sir William Ham- 
ilton and our honored James McCosh. Many 
errors have from time to time been exploded 
and cast off: the true philosophy is in the sub- 
stantial residuum of truth that remains. 

Dr. McCosh is at this time probably the ablest 
living representative of the Scottish philosophy. 
No man is better qualified to expound it. His 
own contributions to its elucidation have not 



92 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

been inconsiderable. In himself he well illus- 
trates that strong and sound educational influ- 
ence which we have been tracing in these pages, 
and which has gone out from his native land over 
all the earth. He may well be called a mission- 
ary not only of gospel truths, but of philosoph- 
ical thought. Since he came among us, and even 
before, he has been doing in America that kind 
of educational work which his great countryman 
Witherspoon did a hundred years ago. His 
Method of the Divine Government, which gave him 
his early and world-wide reputation, his Typical 
Forms, Intuitions of the Mind and Fundamental 
Truth, are all thoroughly imbued with the spirit 
of the Scottish philosophy, as they are with sound 
Christian doctrine. These works form a part of 
the best literature of the age, have been studied 
in many colleges, have been read by the leading 
scholars of many lands, and their principles have 
been inculcated from many pulpits. 

In his volume entitled The Scottish Pliilosophy, 
Biographical, Expository, Critical, fi'om Hutclieson 
to Hamilton, Dr. McCosh has given an interest- 
ing sketch of the leading thinkers and writers of 
the school for a period of about two hundred 
years. He has introduced the work with a chap- 
ter on the characteristics of this philosophy, sin- 
gling out its three most prominent points. He 
styles it the philosophy of observation, the phil- 
osophy of self-consciousness and the philosophy 



SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 93 

of intuitive principles, of fundamental laws of the 
mind, or of the principles of common sense. 
These three combined constitute its great dis- 
tinction by which, on one side or on the other, 
it is differentiated from all other schools of phil- 
osophy. " These three characters," he says, " are 
found in a more or less decided form in the works 
of the great masters of the school." " The great 
merit of the Scottish philosophy," he adds, " lies 
in the large body of truth which it has, if not dis- 
covered, at least settled on a foundation which 
can never be moved. It possesses a unity not 
only in the circumstance that its expounders 
have been Scotchmen, but also, and. more spe- 
cially, in its method, its doctrines and its spirit." 
Dr. McCosh gives a review of the lives and 
opinions of more than fifty of the leading writers 
who through this long period contributed to swell 
the stream of Scottish philosophical literature and 
give character to the system. Among the more 
distinguished names on the list are Thomas Reid, 
Henry Home (Lord Karnes), David Hume, Adam 
Smith, George Campbell, Dugald Stewart, Thomas 
Brown, Henry Lord Brougham, Francis Jeffrey, 
Thomas Chalmers, Sir James Mackintosh and Sir 
William Hamilton. David Hume, however, is no 
true representative of the Scottish philosophy. 
He was far more distinguished as a historian and 
a skeptic than as a philosopher, although he was 
anxious to be appointed professor of moral phil- 



94 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

osophy in the University of Edinburgh. His sub- 
tle and ingenious arguments against Christianity 
were satisfactorily answered in his own day by 
many able writers both in Scotland and in Eng- 
land, and they have since been answered a thou- 
sand times. Still, it is not to be denied that by 
his writings he has for more than a hundred years 
wielded an influence which has been as widely 
spread as it has been pernicious. His example 
is an illustration of the indestructible power of 
philosophic thought even when the philosophy has 
been false and its teachings have been baneful. 
His writings unquestionably had much to do in 
creating that skeptical and anti-Christian public 
sentiment in France which brought in the Revo- 
lution of 1789 with all its terrific results. To 
this day there is scarcely a writer of former times 
who has done more to unsettle all fundamental 
beliefs in Christian truth than David Hume. In 
this case it is most sadly true that the influence 
of Scotland has been enduring and as wide as the 
world. But in the great skeptic the philosophy 
of Scotland is not to be held responsible for what 
one of her gifted sons has done in her name. 

It is not the purpose of the present brief sur- 
vey to describe the character and the work of 
these eminent philosophers — not even of those 
who may be regarded as the greater lights of 
the school. Reid, Stewart, Brown and Hamilton 
may perhaps be taken as the truest representatives 



SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 95 

of the school. If not the founders (for they fol- 
lowed a considerable line of earlier writers), they 
certainly may be considered as the ablest expound- 
ers of the Scottish philosophy. Dr. McCosh pro- 
nounces a just eulogium on each of these great 
masters of the school, especially on Dugald Stew- 
art and Sir William Hamilton. Of the former he 
says : " I have noticed that in many cases Stewart 
hides his originality as carefully as others boast of 
theirs. Often have I found, after going the round 
of philosophers in seeking light on some absolute 
subject, that in turning to Stewart his doctrine 
is, after all, the most profound, as it is the most 
judicious." He tells us that at the time when 
the metropolis of Scotland was the residence of 
many of the principal Scottish families, and of 
persons of high literary and social distinction, 
the house of Dugald Stewart became the centre 
and bond of an accomplished circle, himself the 
chief attraction. Young men of rank and for- 
tune became inmates of his family, and received 
impressions from his teaching and society which 
they carried through life." " In his classes of 
moral philosophy and political economy he had 
under him a greater body of young men who 
afterward distinguished themselves than any oth- 
er teacher that I can think of. Among them we 
have to place Lord Brougham, Lord Palmerston, 
Lord John Russell, Francis Horner, Lord Lands- 
downe, Francis Jeffrey, Walter Scott, Sydney 



g6 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

Smith, Thomas Brown, Thomas Chalmers, James 
Mill, Archibald Alison, and many others who 
have risen to great eminence in politics, in liter- 
ature or philosophy. Most of them have ac- 
knowledged the good they received from his 
lectures, while some of them have carried out in 
practical measures the principles which he in- 
culcated." 

In the brilliant Sir William Hamilton the two 
centuries of Scottish philosophy may be said to 
have reached the flower. Not that he was nearer 
the truth than his predecessors — perhaps he was 
not so near as some of them — but because of his 
originality and his learning. He had a genius 
for philosophy and was certainly one of the great- 
est thinkers of his own or any other age. In 
his thorough acquaintance with the philosophical 
writers of all ages, ancient and modern, it would 
be difficult to find his equal. Dr. McCosh speaks 
of him as the most learned of all the Scottish met- 
aphysicians. " When he was alive," says he, " he 
could always be pointed to as redeeming Scotland 
from the reproach of being without high schol- 
arship. Oxford had no man to put on the same 
level. Germany had not a profounder scholar or 
one whose judgment in a disputed point could be 
so relied on. No man has ever done more in 
cleansing the literature of philosophy of common- 
place mistakes, of thefts and impostures. For 
years to come ordinary authors will seem learned 



SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 97 

by drawing from his stores. For scholarship in 
the technical sense of the term, and in particular 
for the scholarship of philosophy, they (his pred- 
ecessors) were all inferior to Hamilton, who was 
equal to any of them in the knowledge of Greek 
and Roman systems and of the earlier philoso- 
phies of modern Europe, and vastly above them 
in a comprehensive acquaintance with all schools, 
standing alone in his knowledge of the more phil- 
osophic fathers, such as Tertullian and Augus- 
tine ; of the more illustrious schoolmen, such as 
Thomas Aquinas and Scotus ; of the writers of 
the Revival, such as the elder Scaliger; and of 
the ponderous systems of Kant and the schools 
which ramified from him in Germany." 

The influence of the Scottish philosophy, re- 
garded as a whole, both upon Scotland and upon 
other countries, is admirably stated in the follow- 
ing striking passage from Dr. McCosh's volume : 
" The Scottish metaphysicians and moralists have 
left their impress on their own land — not only on 
the ministers of religion, and through them upon 
the body of the people, but also on the whole 
thinking mind of the country. The chairs of 
mental science in the Scottish colleges have had 
more influence than any others in germinating 
thought in the minds of Scottish youth and in 
giving a permanent bias and direction to their 
intellectual growth. We have the express testi- 
mony of a succession of illustripus men for more 
7 



98 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE 

than a century to the effect that it was Hutche- 
son, or Smith, or Reid, or Beattie, or Stewart, 
or Jardine, or Mylne, or Brown, or Chalmers, or 
Wilson, or Hamilton, who first made them feel 
that they had a mind and stimulated them to in- 
dependent thought. We owe it to the lectures 
and writings of the professors of mental science 
— acting always along with the theological train- 
ing and preaching of the country — that men of 
ability in Scotland have commonly been more 
distinguished by their tendency to inward reflec- 
tion than inclination to sensuous observation. 
Nor is it to be omitted that the Scottish meta- 
physicians have written the English language, if 
not with absolute purity, yet with propriety and 
taste — some of them, indeed, with elegance and 
eloquence — and have thus helped to advance 
the literary cultivation of the country. All of 
them have not been men of learning in the tech- 
nical sense of the term, but they have all been 
well informed in various branches of knowledge 
(it is to a Scottish metaphysician we owe the 
Wealth of Nations). Several of them have had 
very accurate scholarship, and the last great man 
among them was not surpassed in erudition by 
any scholar of his age. Nor has the influence 
of Scottish philosophy been confined to its native 
soil. The Irish province of Ulster has felt it quite 
as much as Scotland, in consequence of so many 
youths from the North of Ireland having been 



SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY. 99 

educated at Glasgow University. Though Scot- 
tish metaphysicians are often spoken of with con- 
tempt in the southern part of Great Britain, yet 
they have had their share in fashioning the thought 
of England, and in particular did much good in 
preserving it, for two or three ages toward the 
close of the last century and the beginning of 
this, from falling altogether into low materialistic 
and utilitarian views ; and in the last age Mr. J. 
S. Mill got some of his views through his father 
from Hume, Stewart and Brown, and an active 
philosophic school at Oxford has built on the 
foundation laid by Hamilton. The United States 
of America, especially the writers connected with 
the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches, 
have felt pleasure in acknowledging their obli- 
gations to the Scottish thinkers. It is a most 
interesting circumstance that when the higher 
metaphysicians of France undertook, in the be- 
ginning of this century, the laborious work of 
throwing back the tide of materialism, skepticism 
and atheism which had swept over the land, they 
called to their aid the sober and well-grounded 
philosophy of Scotland. Nor is it an unimportant 
fact in the history of philosophy that the great 
German metaphysician Emmanuel Kant was 
roused, as he acknowledges, from his dogmatic 
slumbers by the skepticism of David Hume." 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE WOMEN OF SCOTLAND. 

IN tracing the influence of any one country 
upon the general civilization of the world, 
the view would scarcely be complete without 
some mention of its women. The present sur- 
vey of Scotland thus far has brought to notice 
only the part borne by her sons. What now 
shall be said of her daughters? Theirs, too, is a 
glorious record of woman's sufferings, of heroic 
endeavor and patient endurance unto death. 

High on that list stand the noble Isabella, 
countess of Buchan, who set the crown on the 
head of Robert Bruce; Catherine Douglas, who 
sacrificed her right arm to save her king ; Agnes 
of Dunbar, who defended her castle to the last 
extremity; Flora McDonald, who saved the life 
of the Young Pretender — styled by one " the 
fairest flower that ever bloomed in the rough 
pathway of a prince's hard fortune;" the noble 
martyrs Margaret Wilson and Margaret Mc- 
Laughlan, who were bound on the seashore and 
drowned by the rising tide ; and, in later times, 
those two bright examples of woman in her lofty 
100 



THE WOMEN OF SCOTLAND. IOI 

sphere of home influence and Christian philan- 
thropy, the accomplished Lady Janet Colquhoun, 
and Elizabeth, last duchess of Gordon, distin- 
guished alike for their beauty and their benefi- 
cence. Still later, even in our own times, we 
have seen Mary Somerville, daughter of a dis- 
tinguished naval officer, by the simple force of 
her own wonderful genius and industry, achieve 
a distinction in the higher walks of mathematics 
and astronomy which placed her in the foremost 
ranks of the savans and scientists of this advanced 
nineteenth century, and will send her name down 
through all time as one of the most remarkable 
women in the world's history — remarkable for an 
eminence in scientific attainments which but few 
men have surpassed, combined with that grace 
of character which is the crowning glory of wo- 
manhood. 

By far the most famous woman of Scotland 
was Mary Stuart, queen of Scots, celebrated 
for her beauty, her accomplishments, her errors 
and her misfortunes. No name of her country 
has gone more fully into history and into the 
general literature of the world than hers. The 
sad story of her life and her tragical end has 
been the undying theme of all the generations 
that have followed, and to this day it has never 
lost its attraction to the voun<r and the imagina- 
tive. It has been the prolific theme of the his- 
torian, the poet, the romancer, the artist, the dram- 



102 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

atist, in many lands, who have all sought to 
embody in different forms the striking features 
of her eventful career and to impersonate the 
young and beautiful queen. As to her personal 
attractions, her rare physical beauty and her high 
intellectual powers there can be no question ; un- 
fortunately, there has never been a like unanimity 
as to her moral character. From the first, through 
all the ages following, there has been, and there 
is still, a widely-contested and yet-unsettled con- 
troversy on this point. With all her fine endow- 
ments of intellect and person, there is to this day 
a cloud of uncertainty which, to say the least, 
mars the picture, and which not all our interest 
in her misfortunes and her cruel fate can remove. 
It is not that we have aught to say in extenuation 
of the part enacted by her powerful rival, Queen 
Elizabeth : that was bad enough ; but what most 
darkens the picture is the strangely reckless course 
pursued by Mary toward her once loyal and ad- 
miring people of Scotland before she fell into the 
hands of the queen of England. Did ever sov- 
ereign so spurn all her wisest counselors, so set 
at defiance all public sentiment, or so despise 
the plainest conventionalities of life ? 

Sir Walter Scott has taken Mary Stuart as 
the heroine of one of his historical romances, 
The Abbot, and has thus thrown around her youth 
and beauty the spell of his matchless genius. Yet 
even he, with all the strong predilections of na- 



THE WOMEN OF SCOTLAND. IO3 

tionality and chivalry in her favor, is compelled, 
in his History of Scotland, to give the following 
cautious estimate of her character : " No inquiry 
has been able to bring us to that clear opinion 
upon the guilt of Mary which is expressed by 
many authors, or to guide us to that triumphant 
conclusion in favor of her innocence of all acces- 
sion, direct or tacit, to the death of her husband 
which others have maintained with the same 
obstinacy. The great error of marrying Both- 
well, stained as he was by universal suspicion of 
Darnley's murder, is a blot upon her character for 
which we in vain seek an apology. What excuse 
she is to derive from the brutal ingratitude of 
Darnley, what from the perfidy and cruelty of the 
fiercest set of nobles who existed in any age, what 
from the manners of a time in which assassina- 
tion was often esteemed a virtue and revenge the 
discharge of a debt of honor, — must be left to the 
charity of the reader." While her true character 
must remain an enigma unsolved, there can be no 
doubt that she was a sincere and devout believer 
in the Roman Catholic faith. The serene com- 
posure with which she received her last sentence 
and met the hour of her execution was worthy 
of the heroic race from which she had sprung, 
and did much to embalm her memory even with 
those who had never approved her life. On the 
accession of her son, James I., to the throne of 
England, her body, which had been interred with 



104 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

great pomp in the cathedral of Peterborough, 
near the castle of Fotheringay, where she had 
been so long confined, was by his order removed 
to the chapel of Henry VII., at Westminster, 
where a magnificent monument was erected to 
her memory. 

Mary Stuart, however, is no true representative 
of the women of Scotland. Her education had 
been in France, where she was trained in all the 
principles of the papal Church. On her return 
to Scotland she set herself in bitter antagonism 
to the growing Protestant Reformation, and she 
was ready to sacrifice the welfare of the nation to 
the ascendency of Rome. Far truer representa- 
tives of the people were those heroic women, 
among both the nobles and the lower classes, 
who stood firmly with Knox, and were ready to 
endure privations and persecution unto death for 
the rights of conscience and a pure Church. 
Such was the heroic wife of John Welsh, daugh- 
ter of John Knox. Such, too, in the following 
century, under the bloody persecutions of Claver- 
house, was the equally heroic wife of John Brown. 
The annals of Church history contain few more 
pathetic pages than those which recount the he- 
roic deaths of Margaret McLaughlan and Mar- 
garet Wilson — the one an aged widow, the other 
a maiden of eighteen — who, bound to stakes in 
the sea, perished together in the rising tide, hum- 
ble martyrs for ever ennobled in death and wor- 



THE WOMEN OE SCOTLAND. 105 

thy to be associated with Patrick Hamilton and 
George Wishart, of the former century. 

The humble name of Jenny Geddes must not 
be omitted in any account, however brief, of 
Scottish women. But little is known about her, 
and some have even questioned her identity with 
the real woman whose famous stool, hurled at the 
head of the dean of Edinburgh in 1637, was the 
signal of a great uprising among the people, end- 
ing in a memorable revolution. The act, insignif- 
icant in itself, and even ludicrous, may be for- 
given on the score of its unwomanly violence 
when we consider that it lifted her obscure name 
into history, that it was provoked by an insult 
almost unbearable, that it gave expression to the 
universal indignation of the people and led to re- 
sults of unspeakable importance to the Scottish 
Church and to the whole nation. In its far-reach- 
ing effects it was not unlike that famous shot first 
fired at Concord in later days in our own land, 
which, Emerson tells us, was " heard round the 
world." 

In their insane folly, ambition and treachery 
King James and his successor, Charles I., had 
persistently set themselves to the task of forcing 
a hated ritualistic service on the Reformed Pres- 
byterian Church of Scotland. The occasion on 
which this poor woman of a brave heart and a 
true Scottish conscience comes to the front with 
her wooden stool and her strong arm is de- 



106 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

scribed by the historian Hetherington in the 
following words : 

"The 23d of July, 1637, was the day on which 
the perilous experiment was to be made whether 
the people of Scotland would tamely submit to 
see the institutions of their fathers wantonly vio- 
lated and overthrown for the gratification of a des- 
potic monarch and a lordly hierarchy. Several 
of the prelates were in the capital to grace the 
innovation with their presence. The attention 
of the public was directed chiefly to the cathe- 
dral church of St. Giles. There the dean of 
Edinburgh prepared to commence the intended 
outrage on the national Church and the most 
sacred feelings of the people. A deep, melan- 
choly calm brooded over the congregation, all 
apparently anticipating some display of mingled 
wrath and sorrow, but none aware what form it 
might assume or what might be its intent. At 
length, when their feelings, wound up to the high- 
est pitch, were become too tremulously painful 
much longer to be endured, the dean, attired in 
his surplice, began to read the service of the day. 
At that moment an old woman named Jenny 
Geddes, unable longer to restrain her indignation, 
exclaimed, ' Villain, dost thou say mass at my 
lug?' and, seizing the stool on which she had 
been sitting, hurled it at the dean's head. In- 
stantly all was tumultuous uproar and confusion. 
Missiles of every kind were flying from all direc- 



THE WOMEN OF SCOTLAND. \OJ 

tions, aimed at the luckless leader of the forlorn 
hope of prelacy, and several of the most vehe- 
ment rushed toward the desk to seize upon the 
object of their indignation. The dean, terrified 
by this outburst of popular fury, tore himself 
out of their hands and fled, glad to escape, though 
with the loss of his sacerdotal vestments. The 
bishop of Edinburgh then entered the pulpit and 
endeavored to allay the wild tumult, but in vain. 
He was instantly assailed with equal fury, and 
was with difficulty rescued by the interference 
of the magistrates." 

But the fire thus kindled could no more be 
quenched. Through forty years of oppression 
the public mind of Scotland had been preparing 
for that memorable day. " It was," says Dr. 
Breed, " the very crisis of a great national revo- 
lution." " It was the first formidable outbreak 
against the tyranny of the Stuarts, and Jenny 
Geddes' stool was the first shell sent screaming 
through the air at those merciless oppressors of 
the two realms ; and the echoes of that shell are 
reverberating to-day among the hills." The very 
next year the great National Covenant of Scot- 
land was signed in the old Greyfriars church 
of Edinburgh, which covenant secured not only 
the religious liberties of Scotland, but, in the 
end, those of England herself. In its more re- 
mote results it overthrew the Stuart dynasty 
and secured the civil and religious liberties of 



I08 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

all English-speaking people. " That tumult in 
the high church of Edinburgh," says Carlyle, 
" spread into a universal battle and struggle over 
all these realms ; there came out, after fifty years' 
struggling, what we call the glorious revolution, 
a habeas corpus act, free Parliaments and much 
else." 

The women of Scotland who have won a place 
in literature are not numerous. In the heroic 
ages, before woman in any land had come to 
wield the pen as a part of her rightful vocation, 
there was, of course, no opening in Scotland for 
her genius or talent in this direction. In all that 
part of the history it was her province to suffer, 
to make sacrifices, to sustain by her companion- 
ship, her counsel and her heroism those who 
battled bravely for the right. And through all 
the long eventful struggles for national independ- 
ence and for civil and religious liberty no coun- 
try was ever blest with a nobler succession of 
mothers, wives and daughters than Scotland. In 
all that has been achieved by her heroic sons the 
gentler sex have been entitled to a full share of 
commendation. But in the general advance of 
woman in many new spheres of usefulness which 
has taken place in all parts of Christendom dur- 
ing the present century and a portion of the last, 
Scotland has not been without her female writers 
who have won an honorable place in poetry, art, 
science and general literature. 



THE WOMEN OE SCOTLAND. IO9 

Prominent on the list of those who have gained 

\ a reputation beyond their own age and country is 

the name of Joanna Baillie, who, born in Both- 

rwell, Scotland, of an honorable and affluent fam- 
ily, passed the larger portion of a long life at 
Hampshire, near London. Her Plays of the Pas- 
sions — a series of dramatic representations written 
with the view of elevating the drama — made her 
famous among her contemporaries and secured 
for her a permanent place among British poets. 
Though her plays attained no great success on 
the stage and failed of their design in reforming 
it, they evinced a deep knowledge of the human 
heart and revealed in the author a high degree 
of poetic genius. Whatever place may be accord- 
ed to her now, she was certainly in advance of 
any of the dramatic poets of her own sex who 
had preceded her. She was contemporaneous 
with Sir Walter Scott, who greatly admired 
her productions and spoke of them as contain- 
ing passages not unworthy of being written by 
Shakespeare. " They form," says a critic of our 
own times, " a mine of genius from which many 
more recent writers of note have drawn to en- 
rich their own stores. In such compositions (her 
dramas) she is unrivaled by any female writer, 
and she is the only woman whose genius, as dis- 
played in her works, appears competent to the 
production of an epic poem. This she never 
attempted." As a woman Miss Baillie was mod- 



IIO SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

est, dignified, genuine and lovely, without a trace 
of vanity or ostentation. "After the publication 
of her Plays," says Mrs. Oliphant, " for many 
years her house at Hampstead was an object of 
pilgrimage to many, and the best of the age 
resorted to it with a respect which was almost 
allegiance. Sir Walter Scott declared that if he 
wanted to give an intelligent stranger the best 
idea possible of an English (he should have said 
Scots) gentlewoman, he would send him to Jo- 
anna Baillie. It would be hard to find higher 
praise." Her poems have had their day, and 
they are now seldom read. Few readers of our 
day could appreciate Scott's enthusiastic admira- 
tion in comparing her to the Bard of Avon. It 
will, however, serve to show the estimate placed 
upon her genius by at least some of her contem- 
poraries to give the passage cited from Sir Wal- 
ter by Mrs. Oliphant, who regards it herself as 
out of all proportion: "A woman might well 
think much of her work of whom he had said 
'that the harp had been silent by silver Avon's 
holy shore for two hundred years ' until 

" ' She, the bold enchantress came 

With fearless hand and heart on flame, 

From the pale willow snatched the treasure, 

And swept it with a kindred measure, 

Till Avon's Swan, while rang the grove 

With Montfort's hate and Basil's love, 

Awakening at the inspired strain, 

Dreamed their own Shakespeare lived again.' " 



THE WOMEN OF SCOTLAND. Ill 

A different order of genius was illustrated in 
the remarkable career of Mrs. Mary Somerville. 
In the higher walks of science few women of any 
age have been so distinguished. When we con- 
sider the obstacles she had to surmount and the 
extent of her attainments, it is obvious that noth- 
ing less than an intellect of the first order and an 
indomitable energy of purpose could have raised 
her to the position she occupied in the world of 
science. Certainly no other woman of the cen- 
tury has reached a place so exalted and been so 
widely honored by the leading scientific associa- 
tions of Great Britain and the Continent. In 
reading the record of her long and honored life, 
as published by her daughter, one scarcely knows 
which is most to be admired — the persistent self- 
education by which she pressed her way into the 
realms of the higher mathematics, the great re- 
sults thus accomplished, the quiet ease with which 
it was all done, or the unassuming, beautiful, 
womanly character which crowned her career 
to the end. 

Mary Somerville's maiden-name was Fairfax. 
She was born in 1780, at Jedburgh, Scotland, the 
daughter of Sir William George Fairfax, a gallant 
gentleman who won his title to knighthood, and 
also to a vice-admiralty in the British navy, by his 
distinguished services at the victory of Camper- 
doiin over the Dutch fleet. Her only education, 
except that which she afterward acquired by private 



112 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

studies, was obtained at a school in Musselburgh, 
near Edinburgh. This early training was so in- 
complete that she had grown to womanhood 
without ever having seen a book on algebra 
or ever knowing what the word meant. It 
seemed a mere accident which at last attracted 
her attention to those mathematical studies in 
which so much of her life was to be spent. But, 
the clue having been once found and the taste 
formed for such work, the path was easy, and 
nothing could turn her from it. She was twice 
married — first in 1804 to Mr. Samuel Greig, a 
cousin, who died after three years at his resi- 
dence, in London. Returning to Edinburgh 
after his death, she there pursued with great 
success her scientific studies, and was married 
again in 18 1 2 to another cousin, William Somer- 
ville, a gentleman of congenial tastes and studies 
with her own, who by his constant encourage- 
ment and companionship contributed not a little 
to that eminence which she attained. This happy 
union was long continued, he dying in his ninety- 
first year and she in her ninety-second, both in 
in Italy, where for years they had resided. 

Mrs. Somerville first attracted the attention of 
men of science by some experiments on the 
magnetic influence of the violet rays of the solar 
spectrum. Her scientific attainments soon pro- 
cured for her the acquaintance of Lord Brough- 
am. At his earnest solicitation, she undertook 



THE WOMEN OF SCOTLAND. II3 

to produce for the Library of Useful Knowledge 
a summary in popular form of the great work 
of Laplace, the Mecanique Celeste. This work, 
however, when completed — an octavo volume of 
six hundred pages — was found too large for the 
society's publications. It was published in a 
separate form in 183 1, with a dedication to Lord 
Brougham. It at once established her reputa- 
tion among the cultivators of physical science as 
one of the most accomplished writers of the pe- 
riod, and letters of congratulation and admiration 
for the successful accomplishment of her difficult 
task poured upon her from many of the leading 
scientists of Great Britain and the Continent. 
When, afterward, she met with Laplace in Paris, 
in conversation he remarked that she was the 
only woman who seemed to take the trouble to 
understand his Mecanique Celeste except one in 
England who had translated it. At the moment 
he did not know the translator was Mrs. Somer- 
ville herself. 

This first work was followed by another in 1834 
— a treatise on the Connection of the Physical Sci- 
ences, an independent and original work of great 
merit, admirably written and dedicated to the 
queen. It elicited the most flattering notices 
from the leading reviews of the time. It has 
since passed through nine editions in English. 
In 1801 it was translated into Italian and pub- 
lished at Florence. Mrs. Somerville's next work 



1 14 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

was her treatise on Physical Geography, in two 
volumes, published in 1848, with a dedication of 
Sir John Herschel. This won the special admi- 
ration of Alexander von Humboldt, and has also 
passed through several editions and been trans- 
lated and published in Italian. 

From the time these important works appeared 
Mrs. Somerville's name became intimately asso- 
ciated by friendly correspondence with many 
of the most distinguished scientific men of her 
times, who are delighted to do full honor to her 
genius. Highly appreciated by Queen Victoria 
and her successive ministers, Sir Robert Peel 
and Lord John Russell, through whose agency 
she received pensions from the government, she 
was the friend and correspondent of Henry 
Brougham, Professors Playfair, Whewell, Sedg- 
wick, Peacock, of the universities; Sir Roderick 
Murchison, Sir David Brewster, Michael Fara- 
day, Sir John Herschel, Astronomer Airy, John 
Stuart Mill, of her own country ; M. Biot, M. 
Arago, M. Puisson, the marquis de Laplace, of 
France; Humboldt of Germany; and others on 
the Continent. She may well be styled by Mrs. 
Hale, author of the Woman's Record, " the most 
learned lady of the age, distinguished alike for 
great scientific knowledge and all womanly vir- 
tues, an honor to England, to her native land, 
and the glory of her sex throughout the world." 

Amid all the honors and the scientific associa- 



THE WOMEN OF SCOTLAND. I I 5 

tions which crowned her advancing years, though 
she may have lost the impress of some parts of 
her early Scotch training, she never wavered on 
the two fundamental beliefs in God and the future 
life. Her faculties remained unimpaired to the 
very day of her death. She took the keenest 
interest in all that was passing in the world 
around, especially in science and discovery, and 
delighted that she was still able to read and solve 
the intricate problems of the higher mathematics, 
as in her earlier years. She had long kept a rec- 
ord of her life, and the following striking words — 
the last from her pen — closed the narrative, only a 
little before her departure : " The blue peter has 
been long flying at my foremast, and, now that 
I am in my ninety-second year, I must soon ex- 
pect the signal for sailing. It is a solemn voyage, 
but it does not disturb my tranquillity. Deeply 
sensible of my utter unworthiness and profound- 
ly grateful for the innumerable blessings I have 
received, I trust in the infinite mercy of my al- 
mighty Creator. I have every reason to be thank- 
ful that my intellect is still unimpaired, and, though 
my strength is weakness, my daughters support 
my tottering steps, and by incessant care and 
help make the infirmities of age so light to me 
that I am perfectly happy." 

Speaking of her Physical Geography, and of the 
great service which by her pen and by her exam- 
ple Mrs. Somerville has rendered to the cause of 



Il6 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

Christian science, Mrs. Hale says : " This work — 
the history of the earth in its whole material or- 
ganization — is worthy to be classed among the 
greatest efforts of the human mind, directing its 
energies to the philosophy of science conjoined 
with moral advancement. Mrs. Somerville has 
done more by her writings to Christianize the 
sciences than any living author ; nor do we recol- 
lect one, except it be Sir Isaac Newton, among 
departed philosophers, who has approached her 
standard of sublime speculation on the visible 
creation united with childlike faith in the divine 
Creator." 

This eminent woman took the liveliest interest 
in all efforts throughout the world to ameliorate 
the condition of her sex and to extend to woman 
high-class education, both classical and scientific. 
Toward the close of life she said, "Age has not 
abated my zeal for. the emancipation of my sex 
from the unreasonable prejudice too prevalent in 
Great Britain against a literary and scientific edu- 
cation for women." Her own life was a noble 
vindication of the truth of her opinions on this 
subject. No one ever filled woman's sphere of 
duty more completely. Well might her intimate 
friend, Maria Edgeworth, write of her. " She 
draws beautifully, and, while her head is among 
the stars, her feet are firm upon the earth." 

Nor have the daughters of Scotland lacked 
worthy representatives of their own sex in the 



THE WOMEN OE SCOTLAND. \\J 

fair fields of historical, educational, fictitious and 
religious literature. Among this class may be 
mentioned Susan E. Ferrier of Edinburgh, styled 
the "Scottish Maria Edgeworth," author of the 
Inheritance and other novels, a popular writer of 
the time of Sir Walter Scott, much admired by 
him and commended by Robert Chambers ; Cath- 
erine Sinclair, author of Modern Accomplishments 
and many other interesting works of a moral and 
elevating character; Lady Janet Colquhoun— a 
daughter of Sir John Sinclair— whose life was 
much devoted to philanthropic beneficence to- 
ward the lower classes, and whose admirable 
writings did much to commend a pure Christian- 
ity to all classes. To these may be added the 
brilliant wife of Thomas Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 
whose self-sacrificing devotion to her unapprecia- 
tive husband (one of a class), and whose remark- 
able correspondence, published by Mr. Froude, 
reveal a character of the first order, and at the 
same time but too sadly indicate what she might 
have accomplished under better auspices. 

Without enumerating further examples, it may 
be proper to remark in this connection that these 
eminent Scottish writers may be taken as an illus- 
tration of that general advance of women in all 
the higher realms of thought and of popular 
authorship which has taken place during the last 
hundred years, not only in the British isles, but 
on the Continent and in America. This new de- 



Il8 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

parture in the education, and in the consequent 
influence, of woman has, in fact, become one of 
the most important and significant characteris- 
tics of the age in which we live. It is one of the 
hopeful signs of promise which the nineteenth 
century is about to send forward into those which 
are to follow. The movement dates back, indeed, 
into the closing decades of the preceding century, 
where its early precursors, Miss Frances Burney 
(Madame d'Arblay), Mrs. Anna Letitia Barbauld, 
Madame de Stael, Mrs. Elizabeth Inchbald, Mrs. 
Ann RadclifT, Joanna Baillie, Jane Austen and 
Hannah More, by the charm of brilliant genius, 
combined in most of them with the charm of 
personal beauty, won their way to popular favor 
despite the prejudices of the age. This first great 
success was followed through all the years of the 
present century, even down to our own day, by 
the still more brilliant triumphs of a host of wri- 
ters, English, Irish and Scotch, such as Maria 
Edgeworth, Anna Maria Porter and Jane Porter, 
author of Thaddeus of Warsaw and the Scottish 
Chiefs, the very pioneers and models of the 
historical romance, which has since become so 
popular. 

" These lofty* romances," says Mrs. Oliphant, 
" delighted the primitive and simple-minded pub- 
lic which as yet knew nothing of WaverleyT The 
sisters Anna Maria and Jane Porter, during their 
residence in Edinburgh, had become intimately 



THE WOMEN OF SCOTLAND. 1 1 9 

acquainted with Sir Walter Scott while a youth 
at college. To the writings of Maria Edgevvorth, 
and especially to the Scottish Chiefs of Miss Jane 
Porter, he acknowledged himself indebted for the 
first suggestion of the Waverley novels — a series 
constituting one of the most marked epochs of 
English literature. 

Since that day, so nearly synchronizing with 
the opening of our century, and thus so clearly 
allied to the genius of Scotland, how wide and 
how fruitful has been the influence of woman's 
pen not only in the line of thought, but in all 
the walks of literature ! Where is the depart- 
ment which she has not touched and adorned ? 
And where is the Christian home-circle in any 
civilized land to which the genial influence of 
her authorship has not extended ! What a gal- 
axy of familiar honored names does her record 
contain ! — Felicia Hemans, Letitia E. Landon, 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Mary Russell Mit- 
ford, Mrs. Jameson, Mrs. Opie, Mary Howitt, 
Charlotte Bronte, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mrs. 
Sigourney, Mrs. Gaskill, Jean Ingelow, Dinah 
Mulock, George Eliot, Mrs. Alexander, Frances 
Power Cobb, Frederika Bremer, Margaret Fuller, 
Mrs. Fawcett, Mrs. Oliphant. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE INFLUENCE OF SCOTTISH SONG. 

WORTHY of distinct mention as a factor in 
the great problem of human civilization 
is the influence of music and song. Every stu- 
dent of ancient history knows how conspicuous 
was that element in all the literature of Greece, 
and in moulding the national character of her 
people. That land of beauty would scarcely have 
sent its influence adown the ages as the classic of 
all lands without the living lyre to voice forth in 
song the martial melodies of its Homer, the inspir- 
ing odes of its Pindar, Anacreon and Sappho, and 
the solemn choruses of its great dramatists. Who 
could adequately write the history of the Chris- 
tian Church, and tell of its triumphs in all lands 
over individual hearts and over mighty nations, 
without taking into account that potent spell 
which is felt from heart to heart in all our holy 
sanctuaries when great congregations are lifted 
heavenward as on the wings of devotion by 
hymns of lofty praise, anthems of rapture and 
songs of salvation? Could there be a gospel 
of true power without music and song? A 

120 



THE INFLUENCE OF SCOTTISH SONG. 121 

singing people, when they sing the sentiments 
of God and of Nature, are always an influen- 
tial and an advancing people. 

Scarcely less potential than her literature, her 
science or her philosophy has been Scotland's 
influence upon the world by the magic melody 
of her songs. In this instance, at least, the bal- 
lads of a nation have proved mightier than its 
laws. A wreath of evergreens and immortelles 
is the fitting chaplet of the Muse of Scottish 
Song, and she has flung it in living beauty over 
the heart of the world. Who has not heard — 
and, hearing, who can ever forget — that witching 
minstrelsy of the North which in childhood's 
hour waked all the chords of feeling in our 
hearts, and even down to old age has power to 
make us young again ? Who has not been 
melted into tenderness by the plaintive pathos 
of "Annie Laurie" or " Roslyn Castle," of " Bon- 
nie Doon " or " Auld Lang Syne " ? And who 
has not been thrilled by the wild warbling meas- 
ures of " Bruce's Address " or " Bonnie Dundee'* 
or " McGregor's Gathering " ? The French sol- 
dier will rush to glory or the grave under the 
martial inspiration of the Marseillaise Hymn; the 
Swiss exiled from his mountain-home is over- 
powered with emotion at the rehearsal of the 
national airs of Helvetia; but all around the 
globe where there are tongues to speak our lan- 
guage there are not wanting hearts to feel the 



122 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

omnipotent charm of nature, love and beauty in 
the Scottish song. 

No claim is here set up for Scotland as a pro- 
ducer of what is called "artistic," or classical, 
music ; her lyric genius did not lie in that direc- 
tion. She has originated no great school of the 
opera or oratorio, like Germany, Austria, France 
and Italy ; she has produced no great composers, 
such as Handel and Haydn, Mozart and Beetho- 
ven, Mendelssohn, Rossini and Wagner. Her 
music and her song have been of a simpler or- 
der. Still, they have not been less real or less 
potential in their influence on the Scottish people 
and on the world than these celebrated schools 
of the great continental nations. From a high 
antiquity Scotland gave birth to a class of na- 
tional airs of a peculiar style and structure, pos- 
sessing a wild, dignified, strongly-marked and 
expressive character. These were put into songs 
by her wandering minstrels and sung from border 
to border over all the land, and from age to age, 
until at last they found permanent and deathless 
expression in the greatest of her lyric poets. 

Long before the days of Robert Burns or 
Allan Ramsay or William Dunbar the Scottish 
people were essentially a musical and song-lov- 
ing race. Scotland was the native home of the 
minstrel and the ballad, and her very atmosphere 
had become vocal with the inspiring national 
melodies, the music of nature in its deepest hu- 



THE INFLUENCE OF SCOTTISH SONG. 1 23 

man emotions. In such a land, and under such 
influences, was born Robert Burns, destined to 
become, notwithstanding the most untoward sur- 
roundings, not only the greatest lyric poet of his 
own land, but one of the great canonized bards 
of all ages and all climes. " He was," says a 
recent critic, " a son of the soil ; without educa- 
tion, without culture, without friends, all he had 
in the world, save a well-knit frame and arms 
strong to work, was genius, against which there 
was every possible obstacle placed that it should 
not be able to do itself justice." 

Yet how resplendently did that genius triumph 
over all its narrow environments ! What a flood 
of song did it pour forth, unheard before in Scot- 
land, to be heard thenceforth by all the world ! 
Incomparable Robert Burns ! as distinguished in 
song as Bruce was in battle, the child of poverty, 
the child of Nature, the man of feeling, the bard of 
humanity, the interpreter of the common people, 
the artist of the soul ! How loved, honored, idol- 
ized by all Scotsmen, at home and abroad, his 
memory as fresh and green in the hearts of his 
country to-day as it was nearly a century ago ! 
Notwithstanding all his foibles and his faults, was 
ever poet so beloved before ? The true represen- 
tative he stands of the national heart and the Scot- 
tish character, and therefore entitled to wear — as 
he confessedly does wear — the laureate crown of 
Scotland. His genius, his history, his deep sym- 



124 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

pathy with humanity, his tenderness, his misfor- 
tunes, his sad end, — all added to the picture and 
combined to endear to his countrymen both the 
poet and the man. 

Principal Shairp tells us that two chief factors 
met to make Burns what he was. The first of 
these was the " great background of national 
melody and antique verse coming down to him 
from remote ages and sounding through his heart 
from childhood." Cradled in the very atmosphere 
of melody, he owed much to the old forgotten 
song-writers of his country, dead for ages before 
he lived and lying in their unknown graves all 
over Scotland. This is the one form of litera- 
ture he had mastered. Reviewing the ordinary 
method of other poets, by which the song is first 
composed and the music afterward set to it, Burns 
made the music the very inspiration of his song. 
The tune, as he expressed it, was sowthed over 
and over in his mind till the words came sponta- 
neously. The words of his songs were inspired 
by the pre-existing popular tunes of his country. 
But all this love and study of the ancient songs 
and outward melody would have gone for noth- 
ing but for the second element — that is, "the in- 
ward melody, born in the poet's deepest heart, 
which received into itself the whole body of na- 
tional song, and then, when it had passed through 
his soul, sent it forth ennobled and glorified by 
his own genius." 



THE INFLUENCE OF SCOTTISH SONG. \2$ 

To this must be added, as this able critic sug- 
gests, that Burns had the good sense to choose as 
the subjects of his verse those great fundamental 
and permanent emotions of our common human- 
ity which alike belong to all climes and which 
time can never antiquate. He has given ultimate 
and consummate expression " in thoughts that 
breathe and words that burn " to the truest, the 
tenderest and the deepest sentiments of love, 
friendship, patriotism, philanthropy, charity, cour- 
age, equality, liberty and manly independence in 
all their varying phases and relations. When, for 
example, he takes the theme of friendship rooted 
in the past, it is for all time that he sings in the 
familiar lines, " Should auld acquaintance be for- 
got?" In the pathos of undying love what can 
be more perfect than his " Mary in Heaven " ? or 
what more thrilling in heroic devotion to country 
than " Bruce's Address at Bannockburn"? or what 
more admirable as an expression of honest pov- 
erty and true manhood than the lines, 

" A man's a man for a' that. 
The rank is but the guinea's stamp: 
The man's the goud for a' that"? 

" This powerful song," says Professor Shairp, 
" speaks out a sentiment that through all his life 
had been dear to the heart of Burns. It has been 
quoted, they say, by Beranger in France and by 
Goethe in Germany, and is the word which springs 



126 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

up in the mind of all foreigners when they think 
of Burns. It was inspired, no doubt, by his keen 
sense of social oppression, quickened to white 
heat by influences that had lately come from 
France, and by what he had suffered for his sym- 
pathy with that cause. It has since become the 
watchword of all who fancy that they have secured 
less, and others more, of this world's good than 
their respective merit deserves. Stronger words 
he never wrote. That is a word for all time." 

Burns did not often try his Muse on warlike 
themes ; but when he did, it was to some pur- 
pose. He was all-alive to the heroic character 
of Wallace and to the achievements of Bruce, 
which some day he purposed to dramatize. The 
national deliverance wrought by Bruce at Ban- 
nockburn was a theme worthy of his genius. 
With it he produced a song that has gone around 
the globe and fired the heroes of a thousand bat- 
tles. Scotland has no grander national air. In 
many a hard-fought conflict it has been to both 
British and American no less than to Scottish 
soldiers all the " Marseillaise Hymn of Liberty " 
has been to the French. Its terse energy of ex- 
pression, its lyric power, its fervid glow of patriot- 
ism, its lofty spirit of self-immolation, have never 
been exceeded since the inspired Muse of Hebrew 
Poetry penned the sublime battle-song of Barak 
and Deborah, recorded in the book of Judges. 
Thomas Carlyle tells us that Burns composed it 



THE INFLUENCE OF SCOTTISH SONG. \2J 

mentally while riding with a single fellow-trav- 
eler across one of the desolate moors of his 
country in a driving storm of snow and hail. He 
remained in deep silence while the elements were 
raging around him, but the working of his feat- 
ures seemed in harmony with the outward war, 
as indicating that sterner conflict of thought which 
was going on within. The result of the day's ride 
was this great ode of independence and victory — 
as worthy of study, certainly, as anything that 
has come down to us from classical antiquity. 
Like all the songs of Burns, it has a Scottish 
dialect of its own and is set to a slow and stately 
national music befitting the mighty thought and 
the solemn rhythm of its stanzas ; but it loses 
none of its grandeur or its fire by being translated 
into modern English. Its words of power and 
pathos are those of Bruce addressed to the vete- 
ran soldiers of his army on the eve of battle. 
"As long as there is warm blood in the heart of 
Scotchmen or of man," says Carlyle, " it will move 
in fierce thrills under this war-song — the best, I 
believe, that was ever written by any pen :" 

11 Scots who have with Wallace bled, 
Scots whom Bruce has often led, 
Welcome to your gory bed, 
Or to victory ! 

" Now's the day and now's the hour : 
See the front of battle lower ! 
See approach proud Edward's power — 
Chains and slavery. 



128 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

" Who will be a traitor knave, 
Who can fill a coward's grave, 
Who so base as be a slave, 
Let him turn and flee! 

" Who for Scotland's king and law 
Freedom's sword will strongly draw, 
Freeman stand or freeman fa', 
Let him follow me ! 

" By oppression's woes and pains, 
By your sons in servile chains, 
We will drain our dearest veins 
But they shall be free! 

" Lay the proud usurpers low : 
Tyrants fall in eveiy foe; 
Liberty's in every blow : 
Let us do or die !" 

This sublime little ode — which can never be 
recited or sung without emotion, and which so 
depicts a nation's history and a hero's triumph 
that it strikes a responsive chord in every human 
breast — well illustrates the mood in which Burns 
composed his songs. He threw his very soul 
into them ; he lived over again the scenes he de- 
scribed; he impersonated their characters and 
caught the very inspiration of their mighty deeds 
and their ennobling sentiments. Save the battle 
itself, there was no better preparation for the pro- 
duction of this song of the ages than the fierce 
storm in which he composed it. While he was 
a true child of Nature, in full sympathy with her 
wildest and her softest moods, and while he was 



THE INFLUENCE OF SCOTTISH SONG. 1 29 

an intense Scotchman, he was not a narrow one. 
His brotherhood was as wide as the world ; his 
sympathies extended to man and brute ; and 
hence, while speaking out his own heart's expe- 
rience, he never failed to touch the deepest and 
strongest chords of human nature. 

One great merit of Burns was that he became 
the reformer and purifier of Scottish song. Be- 
fore his day it had been exceedingly sensual and 
debasing; he breathed a new and nobler life into 
it. With some few exceptions, his songs incul- 
cated sentiments of morality, virtue and all pure 
and generous affections, and thereby became fitted 
for their mission around the globe as the teacher 
of youth in the myriads of home circles where 
they have now been sung for more than a cen- 
tury, to cheer the heart, inspire generous emo- 
tions and bind mankind in the ties of brother- 
hood. Who is the poet that has had a wider 
influence in this respect than Robert Burns ? 

Most fittingly has Professor Shairp closed his 
brief but appreciative monograph on Burns with 
the following just estimate of the character and 
influence of his songs: " So purified and ennobled 
by Burns, these songs embody human emotion in 
its most condensed and sweetest essence. They 
appeal to all ranks, they touch all ages, they cheer 
toil-worn men under every clime. Wherever the 
English tongue is heard — beneath the suns of 
India, amid African deserts, on the Western prai- 
% 



I30 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

ries of America, among the squatters of Austra- 
lia — whenever men of British blood would give 
vent to their deepest, kindliest, most genial feel- 
ings, it is to the songs of Burns they spontaneous- 
ly turn, and find in them at once a perfect utter- 
ance and a fresh tie of brotherhood. It is this 
which forms Burns's most enduring claim on the 
world's gratitude." 

The service rendered by Burns to the ballad 
literature of Scotland by taking its old familiar 
airs and clothing them in a diction of poetic beau- 
ty and elevated sentiment was soon followed by 
other brilliant writers of kindred spirit and ex- 
quisite taste ; such were Sir Walter Scott, Wil- 
liam Motherwell, author of Jeannie Morrison, 
James Hogg, the " Ettrick Shepherd," and Wil- 
liam Edmondstone Aytoun, son-in-law of Profes- 
sor John Wilson and author of the Lays of the 
Scottish Cavaliers. 

Some of the most famous of the Scottish songs 
that have come down from the earlier period are, 
so far as we know, the only things of the kind 
produced by their comparatively unknown au- 
thors ; as, for example, "Auld Robin Gray," by 
Lady Anne Lindsay, and " Annie Laurie," by 
Douglas of Fingland, the unsuccessful suitor of 
the lady of Maxwelton, of whom he sings so 
sweetly. Perhaps we could not find a more 
striking illustration of the character and wide 
influence of this ballad literature than in the 



THE INFLUENCE OF SCOTTISH SONG. 131 

last-named familiar song, which was written prior 
to 1688, and which has been sung for nearly two 
centuries by the English-speaking race in all 
parts of the world. 

This song need not be repeated here, but its 
deep pathos and power may be well illustrated 
by the following little poem of one of our own 
gifted bards, Bayard Taylor. It is entitled " The 
Camp-Song," and is descriptive of the terrible 
scenes before Sebastopol, in the Crimean war, 
where English, Scotch and Irish soldiers stood 
shoulder to shoulder and died as brothers^; 

" ' Give us a song !' the soldier cried, 
The outer trenches guarding, 
When the heated guns of the camps allied 
Grew weary of bombarding. 

"The dark Redan in silent scoff 
Lay grim and threatening under, 
And the tawny mound of the Malakoff 
No longer belched its thunder. 

"There was a pause. A guardsman said, 
'We storm the forts to-morrow; 
Sing while we may : another day 
Will bring enough of sorrow.' 

" They lay along the battery's side, 
Below the smoking cannon — 
Brave hearts from Severn and from Clyde, 
And from the banks of Shannon. 

" They sang of love, and not of fame : 
Forgot was Britain's glory ; 



132 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

Each heart recalled a different name, 
But all sang 'Annie Laurie.' 

" Voice after voice caught up the song, 
Until its tender passion 
Rose like an anthem rich and strong, 
Their battle-eve confession. 

" Dear girl ! her name he dared not speak, 
But as the song grew louder 
Something upon the soldier's cheek 
Washed off the stains of powder. 

" Beyond the darkening ocean burned 
The bloody sunset's embers, 
While the Crimean valleys learned 
How English love remembers. 

" And once again a fire of hell 
Rained on the Russian quarters 
With scream and shot, and burst of shell, 
And bellowing of the mortars ; 

" And Irish Nora's eyes are dim 
For a singer dumb and gory, 
And English Mary mourns for him 
Who sang of Annie Laurie. 

" Sleep, soldiers, still in honored rest 
Your truth and valor wearing: 
The bravest are the tenderest, 
The loving are the daring." 

Sir Walter Scott contributed not a little to the 
ballad literature of Scotland, ennobling it so as 
to make its influence felt over the world. He 
seemed to have caught the very inspiration of 
the old minstrelsy of his country, and he was 



THE INFLUENCE OF SCOTTISH SONG. I 33 

himself the soul of the mediaeval chivalry and 
romance revived. His rich poetic genius, with 
its lofty enthusiasm and its creative imagination, 
breathes forth not only in all his fascinating 
poems, but in all his more fascinating and won- 
derful historical romances, whether Scottish, Eng- 
lish or continental. His first important poem, the 
Lay of the Last Minstrel y gave the keynote of 
his poetry, which was soon heard again in Maf- 
mion, The Lady of the Lake, and in The Lord of 
the Lsles, and never ceased to be heard and ad- 
mired as long as he wrote. When, at last, seem- 
ingly dissatisfied with his poems because, as he 
modestly expressed it, " Byron bate him," he bent 
his versatile and prolific mind to the new task of 
prose fiction, it was curious to se# how his lyric 
Muse was ever and anon bursting forth in song. 
Every reader of those wonderful productions well 
knows that when he did not have an " old song " 
at hand to suit his purpose he easily made one 
just as good, or even better. Even the hym- 
nology of our churches has been enriched with a 
few choice pieces drawn from this source, such 
as " The day of wrath, that dreadful day." 

Scott was not, like Burns, a man of the people, 
in deep sympathy with the poorer classes. He 
had, however, much of that sense of human broth- 
erhood, that deep tenderness of feeling for every 
thing that breathes, which found such hearty 
expression in Burns and voiced itself in almost 



134 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

everything he wrote. But, like Burns, he was a 
lover of Scotland, was proud of its romantic and 
heroic history and gloried in the wealth of its 
magnificent scenery. The traditions of Wallace, 
the wanderings and the prowess of Bruce, filled 
his young heart with admiration and fired him 
with that intense patriotic ardor which had always 
haunted the imagination of Burns as with the spell 
of a passion. Though so unlike in character and 
genius, they may be well classed together in that 
irresistible charm which their writings threw over 
their native land and over all the world. " If 
Scotchmen to-day," says Professor Shairp, " love 
and cherish their country with a pride unknown 
to their ancestors of the last century ; if strangers 
of all countries look on Scotland as a land of ro- 
mance, — this we owe in great measure to Burns, 
who first turned the tide which Scott afterward 
carried to full flood. All that Scotland had done 
and suffered, her romantic history, the manhood 
of her people, the beauty of her scenery, would 
have disappeared in modern commonplace and 
manufacturing ugliness if she had been left with- 
out her two sacred poets." 

The ballad poetry of Scott is, for the most part, 
exceedingly spirited and martial. All his poetry 
is animated in the highest degree, but this is al- 
ways full of life, breathing the high ambition, with 
the " pomp and circumstance, of glorious war." 
No doubt he has pushed this martial spirit to a 



THE INFLUENCE OF SCOTTISH SONG. 1 35 

point not in accord with the peaceful spirit of 
Christianity, but this very element has taken 
strong hold upon the educated youth of all Eng- 
lish-speaking lands, and this makes his poetry as 
popular to-day as when it first appeared. No 
boy can read it without catching something of 
its high heroic enthusiasm and military ardor. 
What inspiring music has he not breathed in the 
famous " Boat-Song " in The Lady of the Lake, 
■' Hail to the chief who in triumph advances," and 
what martial enthusiasm in the following " Border 
ballad " from the Monastery, which may be in- 
stanced as a specimen of all the rest : 

" March, march, Ettrick and Teviotdale ! 

Why, my lads, dinna ye march forward in order ? 
March, march, Eskdale and Liddisdale ! 

All the Blue Bonnets are bound for the Border. 

Many a banner spread 

Flutters above your head, 
Many a crest that is famous in story; 

Mount and make ready, then, 

Sons of the mountain-glen : 
Fight for the queen and our old Scottish glory. 

" Come from the hills where your horses are grazing, 
Come from the glen of the buck and the roe; 
Come to the crag where the beacon is blazing, 
Come with the buckle, the lance and the bow. 

Trumpets are sounding, 

War-steeds are bounding; 
Stand to your arms and march in good order: 

England shall many a day 

Tell of the bloody fray 
When the Blue Bonnets came over the Border." 



136 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

Some of the most popular and widely known 
ballads of recent times are from the pen of Thom- 
as Campbell, author of The Pleasures of Hope. He 
was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1777, and died 
in 1844. His lyric pieces were not numerous, but 
what he wrote was finished to a high degree 
of perfection. Sir Walter Scott greatly admired 
the terse energy and fire of his inspiring verse, 
and thought it far superior to his own. His 
longer poems have been widely read, and they 
have found many admirers ; but his poetic fame 
rests mainly on his ballads and shorter pieces, 
which have been sung around the world. His 
" Hohenlinden," " Battle of the Baltic," " Ye Mar- 
iners of England," " Lord Ullin's Daughter " and 
" Lochiel's Warning " have found a place in all 
collections of English literature and in all hand- 
books of rhetoric and oratory, where they have 
never ceased to furnish the subjects for juvenile 
declamation in our schools and academies. His 
description of the night-attack — 

" On Linden's hills of blood-stained snow 
Where furious Frank and fiery Hun 
Shout in their sulphurous canopy" — 

in its vivid imagery, its brevity, its shifting scenery 
and its rushing movement till all is still and " every 
turf beneath their feet becomes a soldier's sepul- 
chre," is not unworthy of the genius of Scott or 
of Homer. 



THE INFLUENCE OF SCOTTISH SONG. 1 37 

But Scotland's heath-clad hills and valleys green 
through all her borders rang with music of a dif- 
ferent order in the days of fierce persecution unto 
death, when her heroic sons, driven from the pub- 
lic sanctuaries, were compelled to take the open 
fields or the dense forests, and worship God in 
Nature's own sanctuaries at the risk of their lives. 
In that long and dreary period of the Stuart mis- 
rule there was not much call for the softer influ- 
ences of the lyric Muse or the artistic worship of 
the grand overarching cathedral, though these 
had not been unknown in the peaceful days of 
Scottish history. But in that " killing-time," as 
this reign of terror has been not inaptly called, 
when the truest and the best men in the realm were 
not safe either in their own castles or within their 
most secret hiding-places of the mountains, Sco- 
tia's bards not less than her preachers assumed 
a loftier vocation and uttered a sterner voice. No 
class of people — not even our own New England 
Puritans — has been more unjustly assailed or more 
frequently misrepresented than the Presbyterian 
heroes of the Scottish Covenant. If they needed 
any apology, their justification might be found in 
the times in which they lived, the wrongs they 
suffered and the battle for liberty and very exist- 
ence they were called to fight. The following 
stanzas may be taken as an illustration of the 
spirit and character, the lofty bearing, the heroic 
endeavor and the sacrifice unto death of these old 



I38 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

martyrs of the covenant, the end of whose labors 
we now enjoy in every Christian land. The stan- 
zas are entitled " The Cameronian's Dream." 
They were written by James Hyslop, a young 
Scotch poet who, like Robert Pollok, was cut off 
in early youth. He depicts the fierce conflict of 
168 1, in which, at the head of a small band, the 
brave Richard Cameron and his brother fell side 
by side, overpowered by numbers, but contending 
for those principles of civil and religious liberty 
in defence of which Hampden, Russell and Sid- 
ney suffered in England. The description, how- 
ever, would well answer to that greater and more 
disastrous battle at Bothwell Bridge, two years 
earlier, where the blood of the Covenanters flowed 
mingling with the waters of the Clyde — a libation 
to the wrath of Claverhouse. The little poem is 
given in full because of its intrinsic merit as a re- 
membrancer of the days that " tried men's souls." 
In it there is a ring of lyric power not unworthy 
to find a place in Scotia's best Border minstrelsy, 
and to be associated with Byron's famous ode 
on the " Destruction of Sennacherib's Army." 

" In a dream of the night I was wafted away 
To the muirland of mist where the martyrs lay — 
Where Cameron's sword and his Bible are seen 
Engraved on the stone where the heather grows green. 

" 'Twas a dream of those ages of darkness and blood 
When the minister's home was the mountain and wood — 



THE INFLUENCE OF SCOTTISH SONG. 1 39 

When in Wellwood's dark valley the standard of Zion 
All bloody and torn in the heather was lying. 

" 'Twas morning, and summer's young sun from the east 
Lay in loving repose on the green mountain's breast ; 
On Wardlaw and Cairnstable the clear-shining dew 
Glistened there 'mong the heathbells and flowers of blue. 

"And far up in heaven, near the white sunny cloud, 
The song of the lark was melodious and loud, 
And in Glenmuir's wild solitude, lengthened and deep, 
Were the whistling of plovers and bleating of sheep. 

" And Wellwood's sweet valley breathed music and gladness, 
The fresh meadow-blooms hung in beauty and redness ; 
Its daughters were happy to hail the returning 
And drink the delight of July's sweet morning. 

" But oh, there were hearts filled with far other feelings, 
Illumed by the light of prophetic revealings, 
Who drank from the scenery of beauty but sorrow ; 
For they knew that their blood would bedew it to-morrow. 

" 'Twas the few faithful ones who with Cameron were lying 
Concealed in the mist where the heath-fowl was crying, 
For the horsemen of Earshall around them were hovering, 
And their bridle-reins rung through the thin misty covering. 

" Their faces grew pale and their swords were unsheathed, 
But the vengeance that darkened their brow was unbreathed ; 
With eyes turned to heaven in calm resignation, 
They sang their last song to the God of salvation. 

" The hills with the deep mournful music were ringing, 
The curlew and plover in concert were singing ; 
But the melody died 'mid derision and laughter, 
As the host of the ungodly rushed on to the slaughter. 

" In mist and in darkness and fire they were shrouded, 
Yet the souls of the righteous were calm and unclouded ; 



I40 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

Their dark eyes flashed lightning as, firm and unbending, 
They stood like the rock which the thunder is rending. 

" The muskets were flashing, the blue swords were gleaming, 
The helmets were cleft and the red blood was streaming, 
The heavens grew dark and the thunder was rolling, 
When in Wellwood's dark muirlands the mighty were falling. 

"When the righteous had fallen and the combat was ended, 
A chariot of fire through the dark cloud ascended ; 
Its drivers were angels on horses of whiteness, 
And its burning wheels turned upon axles of brightness. 

" A seraph unfolded its doors, bright and shining, 
All dazzling like gold of the seventh refining, 
And the souls that came forth out of great tribulation 
Have mounted the chariots and steeds of salvation. 

" On the arch of the rainbow the chariot is gliding; 
Through the path of the thunder the horsemen are riding: 
Glide swiftly, bright spirits ! the prize is before ye — 
A crown never fading, a kingdom of glory." 

In this connection must be mentioned yet an- 
other class of Scotia's bards whose minstrelsy 
has been heard in many lands. These are the 
writers of sacred song, who from time to time 
have enriched the hymnology of the ages and 
contributed to swell the volume of public praise 
in all Christian sanctuaries. There are critics 
who look with indifference, or perhaps contempt, 
upon this unpretentious style of literature. Such 
condemnation is uncalled for. Is it a great thing 
to produce the ballads of a nation, and yet a thing 
too small for recognition to produce those inspir- 



THE INFLUENCE OF SCOTTISH SONG. 141 

ing hymns of the Christian Church which shall 
be sung in the morning and evening devotions of 
the family and in the Sabbath worship of assem- 
bled multitudes as far as the gospel is preached ? 
Unquestionably, the sacred psalmist (though no 
canonized laureate) has done something for his 
generation and for the world when he has pro- 
duced a song for the Church which can stand 
the test of time and be sung by millions : such 
as Bishop Heber's " Missionary Hymn," " From 
Greenland's icy mountains," and Duncan's " Cor- 
onation Hymn," "All hail the power of Jesus' 
name." 

Some of the most popular, and to all appear- 
ance permanent, of our Christian hymns are of 
Scottish authorship, and they breathe the essential 
spirit of the gospel. Two prominent hymn-wri- 
ters of this evangelical class may be instanced in 
illustration — James Montgomery and Horatius 
Bonar. The extent to which these two Scottish 
authors have enriched our existing hymnology 
is illustrated by the fact that in one of the most 
widely-used collections of our American churches 
there are twenty-four admirable hymns by Dr. 
Bonar, and not less than sixty from the prolific 
pen of Montgomery. Most of Montgomery's 
hymns are of great lyrical beauty, having much 
originality of both thought and expression, strik- 
ing imagery and the very essence of a deep Chris- 
tian experience. They have found a place in the 



142 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

hymnals of all denominations of evangelical Chris- 
tians, have been sung for a large part of the pres- 
ent century in all Christian countries, and have 
become familiar as household words to the aged 
and the young. To myriads of Christian hearts 
all around the globe no sacred songs of Zion are 
better known, and none more precious, than those 
of this sweet singer beginning, " Prayer is the 
soul's sincere desire ;" " Oh, where shall rest be 
found ?" " Daughter of Zion, from the dust;" " Hail 
to the Lord's Anointed !" " People of the living 
God ;" " Sow in the morn thy seed ;" 4< Who are 
these in bright array ?" and his beautiful commu- 
nion hymn of six stanzas, beginning " According 
to thy gracious word." 

One little ode in particular is worthy, for its 
pathos and power, to stand among the best pro- 
ductions of the sacred Muse : 

"There is a calm for those who weep, 
A rest for weary pilgrims found; 
They softly lie and sweetly sleep 
Low in the ground. 

" The storm that racks the wintry sky 
No more disturbs their deep repose 
Than summer evening's latest sigh, 
That shuts the rose. 

" I long to lay this painful head 

And aching heart beneath the soil — 
To slumber in that dreamless bed 
From all my toil. 



THE INFLUENCE OF SCOTTISH SONG. 1 43 

" The soul, of origin divine, 

God's glorious image freed from clay, 
In heaven's eternal sphere shall shine, 
A star of day. 

" The sun is but a spark of fire, 
A transient meteor in the sky ; 
The soul, immortal as its Sire, 
Shall never die." 

A similar service to the Church universal has 
been rendered by Dr. Bonar in many evangelical 
songs of exquisite beauty and tenderness full of 
love and of true spiritual unction. These, too, 
have gone into all our Church hymnals to swell 
the vast volume of rhythmic praise which for 
ages Christianity has been collecting in all lands. 
Many a tender chord has he struck in the heart 
of the Church, and in the heart of the oppressed 
and heavy-laden, by such songs as " Beyond the 
smiling and the weeping " and " Only remembered 
by what I have done." To-day the gospel songs 
of the evangelists Moody and Sankey, incorpo- 
rating these beautiful gems of Christian thought 
with hundreds like them, gathered from other 
gifted bards of Zion, are carrying the glad news 
of our common salvation to the ends of the earth, 
and thus with other Christian agencies preparing 
the way for that glad day of final triumph de- 
scribed by Cowper : " When earth with her ten 
thousand tongues shall roll the rapturous hosan- 
nas round." 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE SCOTTISH UNIVERSITIES AND REVIEWS. 

OUR retrospect of Scotland would not be 
complete without a more distinct notice 
than has yet been given of her ancient univer- 
sities and her great periodical reviews and maga- 
zines. The two channels of influence may be 
appropriately brought together into one view by 
reason of their intimate connection, and also of 
their important bearing on the intellectual and 
moral development of the people. As sources 
of knowledge and as exponents of public opin- 
ion, scarcely anything can be more essential to 
the growth and advancement of an educated peo- 
ple than its schools of the higher culture and its 
public press for the utterance of opinion. The 
one is the institute of the young from generation 
to generation to secure for them all the advan- 
tages of discipline in virtue and culture in sci- 
ence and literature ; the other is the institute of 
adult minds to give them a vehicle of public 
thought and bring them into contact with all 
other educated minds of the period. As centres 
of intellectual and moral light, and as the mould- 

144 



SCOTTISH UNIVERSITIES AND REVIEWS. 1 45 

ing, and even creative, agencies of public opinion 
and national character, the university and the press 
in every free land have had an important history 
through all modern times, and, in the present 
condition of the world, they hold a position of 
supreme importance. 

Scotland has had the full benefit of each agency 
— the periodical press in its higher forms for near- 
ly a century, the university in its various depart- 
ments of science and the humanities, or of the- 
ology, the arts, law and medicine, for about four 
centuries. Of her four great universities, which 
from the first were fashioned on a plan not unlike 
those of Germany and Holland, the three most 
ancient, St. Andrews, Glasgow and Aberdeen, date 
back to about the middle of the fifteenth century, 
whilst that of Edinburgh, the youngest, owes its 
foundation to James VI. The three elder insti- 
tutions were founded during the times of the 
Roman Catholic ascendency. One of them, 
Glasgow, was nearly annihilated during the Ref- 
ormation period, but it was restored by the 
exertions of Queen Mary and James VI. The 
University of Edinburgh, founded after the Ref- 
ormation, had but little of the ancient university 
character, being a professorial seminary on a royal 
foundation rather than a society of graduates or 
students. The royal charter of foundation placed 
it in the hands of the magistrates of the city of 
Edinburgh, who remained its patrons till 1858. 

10 



146 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

Each of these universities has its bursaries, or 
scholarships, though with much smaller endow- 
ments than those of England. 

In no part of the world has the value of uni- 
versity education been more thoroughly tested 
and more strikingly illustrated than in Scotland. 
Through all the centuries of their existence there 
have been found gathered into these schools the 
very elite of Scottish youth from every class of 
rich and poor, sons of the nobility, the gentry 
and the common people. In a large degree they 
have had the training of the people and the for- 
mation of that public sentiment, even among the 
laboring classes, which has made the Scottish 
parent look upon scholarship with respect and 
desire it for his sons as the highest passport to 
distinction, usefulness and honor. The universi- 
ties have thus been an open door through which 
successive generations of talented and aspiring 
young men have pressed their way to the high- 
est positions in the service of the country, and 
have perpetually filled up the ranks of law, divin- 
ity, medicine, teaching and successful authorship. 
The brightest lights of the Scottish pulpit have 
been those at every epoch that were kindled at 
the universities. The result has been that through 
all its history the Church in Scotland has been 
eminently blest with a learned and godly minis- 
try fully abreast with the advancing science and 
literature of the age. A large proportion of the 



SCOTTISH UNIVERSITIES AND REVIEWS. 1 47 

best British authorship, not only in theology but 
in science and literature, has been connected with 
the Scottish pulpit and has come of the fostering 
influences of the Scottish universities. This has 
been abundantly illustrated in the annals of the 
American churches in all the earlier periods, 
when our pulpits and our college-halls were 
adorned by eminent divines — like Charles Nisbet 
and John Witherspoon, John Glendy of Irish birth, 
John Mason, and his still more distinguished son 
John M. Mason, of New York— born or educated 
in Scotland. 

What is true of the universities in Scotland as 
the source of a highly-educated and influential 
clergy is equally true as it regards all the other 
learned professions. In an eminent degree the 
leaders of the people have been trained to thought 
and activity in these ancient and renowned schools 
Much of the intellectual and moral power thai 
has given life and character to her home-popula- 
tion, and then gone forth to make that influence 
felt in other lands, may be traced back to the uni- 
versities as the primal well-spring. Statesmen, 
jurists, orators, divines, physicians, educators, dis- 
coverers, eminent scientists, great merchants, bank- 
ers, publishers, manufacturers and engineers, as 
well as soldiers and artisans, have caught that 
inspiration which useful knowledge gives to the 
mind and prepared themselves for their life-work at 
these great seats of learning and religion. Chris- 



I48 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

tianity is the world's greatest civilizer. Christianity 
can do nothing better for a country after it has once 
converted its inhabitants to Christ than when it 
founds and opens for youth its permanent insti- 
tutions of the higher learning. This it did in 
Scotland at an early day, and thereby gave the 
guarantee of progress and set the seal of its power 
over an educated people for all time to come. The 
Scottish universities have been the centres of light 
and influence not only to the educated youth of 
Scotland, but in an unusual degree to the young 
men of England, Ireland and America. Even 
to this day, when universities and colleges have 
been so multiplied in our own land, it is no un- 
common thing for our talented young men of 
wealthy families to obtain a part of their educa- 
tional finish as students at these universities, espe- 
cially that of Edinburgh. 

It is certain that the universities may claim the 
honor of having trained in almost every branch 
of literature and science the men who have made 
Scotland illustrious. At these seats of learning 
they have been educated, and here, in maturer 
life, they have lived and taught and carried for- 
ward their profound investigations. The literary, 
scientific, philosophical, and even religious, life 
of Scotland has gathered around these schools. 
There could be no complete history of the Scot- 
tish people without taking them into the account. 

The periodical literature of Scotland, as rep- 



SCOTTISH UNIVERSITIES AND REVIEWS. 1 49 

resented by the leading reviews and magazines, 
belongs to the present century. Through them 
Scotland, and especially her little capital, Edin- 
burgh, has uttered a voice on all the high themes 
of criticism, philosophy, art, education, religion, 
politics and general literature which has been 
heard with respect around the globe. In Great 
Britain there had been periodical literature of 
various types during the preceding century, even 
back to the times of Johnson and Addison. It 
was reserved to the opening years of the nine- 
teenth century, and to the Scottish metropolis, to 
inaugurate a new order of publication. The first 
of the great organs of opinion made its appearance 
at Edinburgh in October, 1802, in the form of the 
Edinburgh Review. It was the beginning of that 
brilliant and popular school of writing which has 
gone on increasing its volume and widening its 
channel of influence to the present day. Fifteen 
years later, in the same city, it was followed by 
Blackwood 's Magazine, the most important of 
modern monthly magazines as being, like the 
Review, the precursor of a long and famous line. 
The Review owed its origin to a little coterie of 
young men of brilliant genius, some of Scottish 
and some of English birth, but mostly lawyers 
who were then residing at the Scottish metropo- 
lis, where they had pursued their classical and 
legal studies. 

Prominent in the number were Henry Brough- 



150 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

am, who became lord chancellor of England, 
James Grahame, poet of the Sabbath, Mr. Horner, 
Lords Seymour and Cockburn, Sydney Smith, the 
famous wit, a clergyman of the English Church, 
who was the first to propose the setting up of the 
Review and wrote a large number of its earlier 
articles, and Francis Jeffrey, who became identi- 
fied with it as its chief editor and its " arch-critic." 
The first number of the Review startled the pub- 
lic by its originality, its ability, its vigor and its 
tone of independence. " It is impossible," says 
Lord Cockburn, " for those who did not live at 
the time and in the heart of the scene to feel or 
understand the impression made by the new lumi- 
nary or the anxiety with which its motions were 
observed. It was an entire and instant change of 
everything that the public had been used to in 
that sort of composition. The learning of the 
new journal, its talent, its spirit, its writing and 
its independence, were all new ; and the surprise 
was increased by a work so full of public life 
springing up suddenly in a remote part of the 
kingdom." No one of its originators, or any one 
else at that day, could have foreseen or imagined 
its long continuance, or the immense results in 
the progress of public opinion and the diffusion 
of intelligence which were destined to flow from 
such a publication. It was the unconscious inaug- 
uration of that full, free and fearless discussion 
of all matters worthy of inquiry and affecting the 



SCOTTISH UNIVERSITIES AND REVIEWS. 151 

public interests which has now become one of the 
essential institutes of the nineteenth century. 

The brilliant monthly magazine originated by 
William Blackwood of Edinburgh in 1 8 17, and 
bearing his name, was as remarkable in its early 
issues, and created as profound a sensation on the 
public mind, as its precursor, the Review, Its 
great success, both financial and literary, was 
largely due to its versatile and sagacious pub- 
lisher, Blackwood, who took the whole risk of 
the new venture in literature. But his remark- 
able powers were fully equal to his task. Never 
did proprietor and editor hold the reins with a 
bolder and a steadier hand, and never did any 
publication more surely win its way to popular 
favor until it became a living power in the land. 
Like its great predecessor, it was also the joint- 
product of a band of highly-gifted and brilliant 
young men, who thus, under the masterly direc- 
tion of Blackwood, found a fitting organ for the 
expression of their original and powerful think- 
ing. Of this number were John Gibson Lock- 
hart, son-in-law of Walter Scott, Professor John 
Wilson, author of the Nodes Ambrosiance and 
Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life, and Sir 
William Hamilton. A more brilliant band of 
critics and writers could not have been found 
in the British isles. They at once by their wit 
and genius gave character to the magazine. " Its 
success," says Mrs. Oliphant, " was immediate. 



152 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

Four thousand copies of the witty organ were 
sold in a month. Thus Edinburgh was once 
more the scene of one of the great events of 
modern literary history. All the magazines of 
more recent days are the followers and offspring 
of this periodical, so audacious in its beginning, 
so persistent and permanent in its influence and 
power." 

This writer, in her recent work The Literary 
History of England, has given an admirable ac- 
count of the origin and success of these two 
great Scottish periodicals. Though they had to 
contest the field ere long with many able succes- 
sors and rivals in England, such as the London 
Quarterly and Westminster Review, and the yet 
abler monthlies of our own time, they have still 
maintained their ground in the ancient capital, 
and to this day exert no inconsiderable influence 
on the opinions of men in both Great Britain 
and America. 

The whole story, however, is not yet told. In 
1844 still another of these great organs made its 
appearance in the scholarly and elegant pages of 
the North British Review. It grew out of the de- 
mands of public opinion created by the memora- 
ble disruption of the Church of Scotland and the 
inauguration of the Free Church the year preced- 
ing. It became to a certain extent, though not 
exclusively, the exponent of the opinions of the 
Free Church party, and ranked among its con- 



SCOTTISH UNIVERSITIES AND REVIEWS. 1 53 

tributors and supporters the many eminent men, 
divines and civilians, who had taken part in the 
movement. No great review ever sprang into 
being under more auspicious circumstances or 
was sustained by abler men. From the first it 
commanded public attention by its weighty mat- 
ter and by its moderation and fairness in the dis- 
cussion of all important questions. It was learned, 
dignified, racy and discriminating, conservatively 
liberal in opinion, independent in tone, and yet 
unreservedly Christian in principle. It became 
the exponent of sound philosophy, and the staunch 
defender of the Christian faith as held by the Pres- 
byterians oi the Free Church of Scotland. After 
a brilliant course of more than a quarter of a cen- 
tury, it gave way in 1871 to the British Quarterly 
of London, an able periodical dating from 1845 
and advocating substantially the great Christian 
principles which had been maintained by the 
North British. 

These widely-read periodicals, especially the 
first two, have unquestionably played a conspicu- 
ous part in the literature of our century. They 
have been almost oracular in their influence. 
While they have contributed much to give intel- 
lectual life and character to Scotland, they have 
perhaps contributed still more to awaken the 
thought, stimulate the inquiry and form the opin- 
ions of thousands of young men in other lands. 
They have been the medium through which many 



154 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

of the ablest writers of the age have addressed 
the great reading public, and their utterances, 
coming from men of thorough scholarship and 
clothed in attractive style, have not been in vain. 
As organs of the educated thought of our cen- 
tury, and as exponents of that influential public 
opinion which in modern times has so much to 
do with the practical administration of the world's 
affairs, it would be difficult to name any three 
great journals which have had a wider reading 
and a more potential and decisive influence on 
English-speaking men. Through the wide do- 
mains of Britain and America they have never 
ceased to find thoughtful readers, not only among 
intelligent youth, but among representative men 
in all the higher classes of society. Nor is it 
any hesitating and uncertain voice on the mo- 
mentous questions of the times which the Scot- 
tish capital has thus sent around the globe. 

Before closing this account of the Edinburgh 
periodical literature, it is proper to add that for 
more than a century the Scottish capital has been 
the publishing centre of several of the most wide- 
ly-known encyclopaedias of modern times. By 
its encyclopaedic literature this classic city of the 
North has been almost or quite as much a pio- 
neer and a leader in the advancement and diffu- 
sion of useful knowledge as in the higher criti- 
cism it was a guide to open the road and blaze 
the way by its reviews and magazines. The uni- 



SCOTTISH UNIVERSITIES AND REVIEWS. 1 55 

versal encyclopaedia, which aims to condense, clas- 
sify and publish to the world all that man knows 
on every subject, is one of the latest, as it is one 
of the most important, forms of literature. It 
belongs mainly to the latter centuries of modern 
history. It has reached its maturity within the 
last hundred and fifty years. Though Scotland 
was not the first to enter this field, and must yield 
the precedence here to Germany and France, still 
the Scots were early in the field, and Edinburgh 
in advance of all other British cities. The first 
editions of the famous Encyclopedia Britannica 
were brought out in ten volumes at Edinburgh 
as early as 1 776-1 783, followed by nine succes- 
sive editions to the present day, in which it has 
grown to twenty-two volumes. From first to 
last, this encyclopaedia has been executed and 
published in Edinburgh, the literary reputation 
of which it has helped in no small degree to in- 
crease. 

This important work, which still holds its place 
in all libraries, public and private, was followed 
by the Edinburgh Encyclopedia , edited by the 
distinguished scientist Sir David Brewster, which 
appeared in 18 10, and was finished in 1830 in 
eighteen volumes. In all departments of the 
physical sciences it was more complete than any 
preceding work of the kind. Following this, in 
1 841-1850, there was also published in Edin- 
burgh Chambers's Encyclopedia, in ten volumes, 



I56 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

founded on the German Conversations-Lexicon of F. 
A. Brockhaus, though substantially a new work. 
This has been received with favor throughout 
Great Britain and America, and in our own coun- 
try is found in nearly all libraries. 

It is impossible to estimate, from an education- 
al point of view, the value of this encyclopaedic lit- 
erature. No library is now complete without these 
compendiums of universal knowledge. By them 
the world has been filled with the treasured wis- 
dom of all ages. In them is illustrated the fine 
sentiment of Tennyson : 

" Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the 
suns." 

Whatever of good has come to the world by 
the accumulated stores of learning, Edinburgh 
has certainly had much to do in the publication 
and dissemination of it by means of the great 
encyclopaedias. Nor have these been the only 
means. Her enterprising publishing-houses have 
long been known to the reading world as stand- 
ing side by side with those of London, Leipsic 
and other great centres of literary production, 
and during the century the teeming presses of 
the Ballantynes, Constables, Nelsons and Clarks 
of Edinburgh have stood among the foremost in 
sending forth in book-form a pure and elevated 
literature of the first order. One generation can 



SCOTTISH UNIVERSITIES AND REVIEWS. 1 57 

scarcely leave a better legacy to another than 
the written and published thoughts of its ablest 
authors. When the great publishing-house has 
put these thoughts into the permanent form of 
books and given them the widest possible diffu- 
sion, it has done for mankind a service not to be 
forgotten. Such a service many of the Edinburgh 
publishing-houses did for our own country through 
much of our earlier history. In science, philoso- 
phy, history, theology and general literature many 
of our ablest and most enduring works have ema- 
nated from the Scottish press, and still stand in 
all their substantial dignity on the shelves of our 
libraries. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE CHURCHES OF SCOTLAND. 

IN setting forth the influence exerted by 
Christianity upon the people of Scotland, and 
through them upon the general advance of civiliza- 
tion throughout the world, it will not be necessary 
to dwell long on the earlier periods of the history. 
The precise point of time when the gospel first 
found its way among the warlike and intractable 
tribes inhabiting the region has never been clearly 
ascertained. The strong probability, as stated by 
the historian of the Church, Hetherington, is that 
the " religion of Christ had penetrated to the 
mountains of Caledonia before the close of the 
second century." During the succeeding centu- 
ries, down to the middle of the sixth, it gained an 
increasing hold upon the people of the land, as 
seen in the widely-diffused worship of the Cul- 
dees and the permanent institutions founded by 
Columba at Iona. After the sixth century, how- 
ever, this simple and primitive style of Christian- 
ity gradually gave way to the more ambitious and 
imposing ritualism of the Church of Rome ; so 
that during the Middle Ages, down to the era of 

158 



THE CHURCHES OE SCOTLAND. I 59 

the Protestant Reformation, Scotland had become 
to all intents and purposes a papal country wholly- 
subject to the Roman domination and intensely 
devoted to its interests. 

In the sixteenth century, under the masterly 
leadership of Knox and his heroic band of Re- 
formers, lay and clerical, that ascendency was 
after many conflicts broken for ever, and the 
great mass of the Scottish people became as 
intensely Protestant and Presbyterian as it had 
before been Roman Catholic. The relics and 
the monuments of that protracted ascendency 
may be seen to this day all over Scotland in the 
crumbling walls and the ruined splendor of many 
an ancient castle, cathedral and abbey, which still 
linger on the scene to tell how terrible was the 
struggle that delivered the Scottish people from 
a foreign and despotic sway. 

From the thorough reformation of the six- 
teenth century, the true spiritual glory of the 
Scottish Church begins. Our purpose, accord- 
ingly, in this brief chapter, is to speak only of 
those influences, evangelical, educational and civ- 
ilizing, which belong to this last period of the his- 
tory, and which have gone forth from the com- 
bined labors of the several Reformed Churches 
of Scotland. Of these there have been four dis- 
tinct and important bodies. 

The first and smallest of these, the Episcopal, 
or Anglican, Church, has never had any strong 



l6o SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

hold on the Scottish people, and, although its his- 
tory dates back almost to the period of the Ref- 
ormation, it represents a very small portion of 
the population. Its history during the earlier 
periods, under the Stuart dynasty, was a record 
of tyranny, usurpation and bloody persecution 
not exceeded by the worst times of the papal 
domination, and it fully justified the remark which 
grew into a proverb — that " Episcopacy never ap- 
peared on Scotch soil except as a persecutor." 
Introduced at first by the treachery of James VI. 
of Scotland, a man of some book-learning, of 
much pretension and of small practical states- 
manship, who had become recreant to his own 
early professions, it was always an exotic and 
never flourished. His successor strove in vain 
to force the system upon people who abhorred 
its prelatical orders and its ritualistic forms of 
worship. Its forcible introduction at the first only 
served to illustrate the extreme folly of the would- 
be Solomon who attempted it, and its absolute 
failure to take root in the land, despite the foster- 
ing care and the persecuting protection of suc- 
cessive monarchs, only showed how deeply and 
ineradicably attached were the Presbyterian peo- 
ple of Scotland to their own simpler and purer 
ecclesiastical polity and worship. 

It would not be right, however, to hold the 
Scottish Episcopal Church of the present day re- 
sponsible for the intolerant bigotry of its royal 



THE CHURCHES OF SCOTLAND. l6l 

supporters and its unwise prelates of the persecut- 
ing ages. Presbyterianism itself, though it suffered 
so much and came so near being crushed under 
the iron heel of oppression during that long reign 
of terror, was not entirely free from the intoler- 
ant spirit of the times. When the day of deliv- 
erance came with the Revolution of 1688 and the 
Hanoverian succession, Episcopacy in turn had to 
suffer many disabilities during the following cen- 
tury. Still, it held its ground in Scotland, and, 
though small, is to-day an intelligent and influ- 
ential body within the limited sphere of its opera- 
tions. Both in polity and in the form of worship 
it has become far more assimilated to the charac- 
ter of Anglican Episcopacy than in its earlier 
career. It now has seven dioceses in Scotland, 
with as many bishops, and a clergy numbering 
two hundred and thirty. 

The Roman Catholic Church in Scotland is of 
about equal strength, having one archbishop and 
a clergy of two hundred and sixty. It, however, 
draws its ministers and its membership not so 
much from the Scottish people as from the Irish 
population resident in the cities. Catholicism 
does not flourish in the land of Knox. 

It is through the Presbyterian churches that 
Christianity has gained its enduring influence over 
the Scottish mind and made that influence felt 
around the globe. It may be questioned whether 
in any other country Christianity has ever gained 
11 



1 62 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

a hold so strong and so general over all the deep- 
est affections of a united people. With the small 
exceptions first named — the remnants of the papal 
and Episcopal Churches — Scotland is to-day, and 
has been for three centuries, as decidedly Presby- 
terian as it is intensely Protestant and Christian. 
The reformation from the beginning was thorough 
and complete, and it wrought into the inmost con- 
victions of the Scottish people a system of doc- 
trine, w T orship and polity grounded on the word 
of God and the rights of private conscience. This 
system proclaimed as its distinctive fundamental 
principle the supreme headship of Jesus Christ as 
sole Lord of the conscience and Sovereign of the 
Church. This in essence was Presbyterianism as 
understood by Knox, and by Calvin at Geneva 
before him. This, through all its reformations 
and divisions in Scotland, and in every other 
land is Presbyterianism still, and this the Scottish 
people received with all their hearts when they 
renounced the sacramental system of Rome and 
threw off the papal yoke. 

While the potential influence of Christianity 
over the Scottish population has remained for 
centuries an incontestable fact, it is easy to see 
how Christianity, having once gained that ascend- 
ency, has never lost it. Even down to our own 
times the faith of the children remains substan- 
tially the same as was the faith of their fathers. 
They have neither renounced it at the demands 



THE CHURCHES OF SCOTLAND. 1 63 

of a rationalistic infidelity on the one hand, nor 
on the other surrendered it for some more preten- 
tious and plausible form of ecclesiastical order. 
Why is this, and what is the secret of the strong 
hold which Presbyterian Christianity has had from 
the first, and still has, in Scotland ? The true an- 
swer is to be found partly in the method of public 
instruction adopted by the Scottish clergy, and 
partly in that universal system of biblical and cate- 
chetical instruction in which every Scottish family 
was required to indoctrinate its children. The 
Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible, 
was the basis of all Scottish preaching, and the 
people, from the period of the Reformation down 
through all the history, were Bible-readers, had 
the Bible in their hands even in the public sanctu- 
aries, as in their own houses, and would not toler- 
ate any preaching except as it was scriptural. The 
first and highest element of all pulpit ministration 
was that it should expound the word of God, in- 
culcate its essential doctrines and apply its pre- 
cepts to life and conduct. The Scottish preacher 
was nothing except as he was a student, an ex- 
pounder, a teacher, of the word of God. A min- 
istry thus biblical, doctrinal and expository made 
an intelligent Christian people thoroughly ground- 
ed in the faith and in the knowledge of the Bible. 
And in time such a people demanded such a 
ministry. 

Along with this public instruction of the Sab- 



164 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

bath-day and the house of worship was the equally 
potential method of training the Scottish children 
and youth in the home circle under the faithful 
discipline and instruction of their parents. Both 
at home and in their schools the Bible was faith- 
fully taught, as were also the Westminster Cate- 
chisms and Confession of Faith. The result was 
that every Presbyterian child in Scotland, always 
under the double instruction of the Christian home 
and the Christian Church, was early indoctrinated 
in all the essential truths of the Bible, and grew 
up with a knowledge of God and of salvation 
which he could nevermore forget. It may, in- 
deed, be questioned whether the youth of any 
Christian land ever received a more thorough and 
valuable acquaintance with the saving truths of 
the gospel than did the youth of Scotland under 
this vigilant and wise discipline, unless the excep- 
tion be in our own Presbyterian and New England 
churches of a hundred years ago, where, in fact, 
they obtained precisely the same kind of educa- 
tion, both biblical and catechetical, under the wise 
usages established by those mighty men of old, the 
Pilgrim and Puritan Fathers. The system in each 
case was the same, with the same result. 

It has become the fashion in our day to criticise 
and disparage this early method of biblical and 
Christian training for the young as lacking in 
breadth and culture, but, with all our wider cult- 
ure and more artistic methods, it may well be 



THE CHURCHES OF SCOTLAND. 1 65 

doubted whether we have yet discovered any sys- 
tem of education better adapted to fortify the mind 
in habits of virtue and form a really great character 
than the one so long tried and so thoroughly tested 
by the Presbyterian churches of Scotland, and 
after them by the early Congregational and Pres- 
byterian churches of our own country. We well 
know what this system of biblical and catechetical 
instruction of the pulpit and the fireside did for the 
people of Scotland and of America through all the 
earlier history, and what it is still doing both there 
and here so far as it is maintained. It made Scot- 
land and it made New England Bible-reading and 
Sabbath-observing lands ; it made great individual 
characters ; it made flourishing and intelligent 
communities whose type and whose influence to 
this day have not died out. Whether the more 
popular methods that are now supplanting them 
will do as much remains to be seen. 

The chief growth of Presbyterianism in Scot- 
land, however, has been during the last two cen- 
turies, or since the memorable Revolution of 1688. 
Prior to that event, as already stated, it had to 
struggle for existence, and it had been brought so 
low under the reign of the Stuarts that the Gen- 
eral Assembly which met for the first time under 
William and Mary, in 1690, had not met before 
for thirty-seven years. " If the Revolution," says 
Macaulay, " had produced no other effect than 
that of freeing the Scotch from the yoke of an 



1 66 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

establishment which they detested and giving 
them one to which they were attached, it would 
have been one of the happiest events in our his- 
tory." Low as the Church was brought by these 
bitter and persistent persecutions, the truth itself 
had not been crushed ; the people had not lost 
their martyr-spirit nor renounced their allegiance 
to Christ's cross and covenant and crown. 

Leaving out of view some minor ecclesiastical 
communions that still exist as the mere fragments 
of larger divisions, the Presbyterian Church of 
Scotland of our day is comprised in three separate 
bodies, each having its own organization, all hold- 
ing substantially the same doctrinal and ecclesias- 
tical standards or confession of faith, and all to- 
gether representing the great bulk of the Scottish 
population. The first of these, and the most an- 
cient, dating from the formation of the First Gen- 
eral Assembly, in 1560, in the time of Knox, but 
distinctly connected with the British government 
at the Revolution of 1688, is the Established 
Church, now consisting of about fourteen hun- 
dred parishes, or congregations, and nearly four- 
teen hundred ministers. The second is the United 
Presbyterians, a body formed in 1847 by the union 
of two distinct secessions from the old Established 
Church — one in 1733, called the Associate, or 
Secession, Synod, under Ebenezer Erskine ; the 
other, called the Relief Synod, in 1 76 1. This 
united body now consists of five hundred and 



THE CHURCHES OF SCOTLAND. 1 67 

twenty-six parishes and five hundred and sixty- 
four ministers. The third is the Free Church of 
Scotland, the result of what Hetherington calls 
the third reformation and the third secession, 
formed in 1843 under the lead of Dr. Chalmers. 
This Church now comprises ten hundred and nine 
pastoral charges and ten hundred and sixty-eight 
ministers. This will suffice to show the relative 
strength of the three principal Scottish Churches. 
Besides these, some small remnants of the Orig- 
inal Seceders and the Reformed Presbyterians are 
still found. 

It has been remarked by its enemies, and some- 
times conceded by its friends, that the weak point 
of Scottish Presbyterianism is its tendency to 
disintegration, as seen in its numerous divisions. 
Possibly its whole influence on the people and 
on the outside world would have been stronger 
and the work of Christ more effectually accom- 
plished had there been no divisions, and had the 
Church been a unit presenting always an unbroken 
front to the world. But any one who has atten- 
tively read the history knows that this bitter ex- 
perience of conflict and division has never been a 
thing left to the Church's option. The division 
at every great crisis has been unavoidable. It 
has not sprung from within, but has forced itself 
upon the Church from without. It has been the 
sad price paid for being connected by law with 
the civil state. Every single secession in the long 



1 68 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

history of the Scottish churches has arisen from 
some attempt of the dominant civil power to in- 
trude into and control the spiritual functions that 
belong exclusively to the spiritual sphere of the 
Church. The civil government, either on the 
part of the Crown or through the legislative body 
and the courts of law, has in every case intruded 
into purely spiritual matters where it had no right 
to intrude, and could not intrude without violating 
sacred compacts. This Erastian principle of the 
English government has from time to time been 
asserted in one way or another, and this usurped 
authority in spiritual matters the people of Scot- 
land have always resisted. This alone has made 
the divisions and disruptions of the Scottish 
Church. But for this the three existing Churches 
of Scotland might have always formed one un- 
broken body. If this one great stumbling-block 
of division were out of the way, who will say that 
the Churches of Scotland might not now speedily 
come together in one great national Church ? 

There are worse things than divisions, and these 
the Churches of Scotland have so far avoided. 
However much they have been divided, and are 
still divided, they have all been substantially 
agreed on the great doctrines of the faith once 
delivered to the saints ; they all stand firmly by 
the essentials of the Westminster Confession ; 
they all contend earnestly to-day, as in former 
ages, for the fundamental principles of the Chris- 



THE CHURCHES OF SCOTLAND. 1 69 

tianity of Knox, of Calvin and Luther, of Augus- 
tine and Paul. They have not gone to pieces, as 
in some nominally Christian lands, on the decep- 
tive rocks of rationalism, nor, as in others, on the 
equally dangerous sands and shoals of a sacra- 
mental ritualism. They stand to-day where they 
have stood from the first, like a rampart of ada- 
mant forming a tempest-beaten but indestructible 
breakwater of sound doctrine, against that wild 
ocean of doubt and skepticism which has en- 
gulfed other Churches and threatens at times to 
carry everything before it. Divided on the sub- 
ordinate points of ecclesiastical and political alle- 
giance, they stand to-day, as they have always 
stood, a unit on the grand old doctrines of the 
Protestant Reformation. 

It is at this point that we are brought face 
to face with the essential element of the entire 
Scottish civilization and with the real strength of 
the Scottish character. It lies in its religion, in 
the theology of the people. The fundamental fact 
of Scottish civilization as developed in all the his- 
tory of the country is Christianity. But for Chris- 
tianity, Scotland, shut up within bleak and nar- 
row borders, would scarcely have been heard of 
in the world's affairs. Christianity has made the 
Scottish character. Still more : the fundamental 
fact in Scottish Christianity through all the ages 
has been its uncompromising adherence to the 
word of God. No people were ever more thor- 



170 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

oughly indoctrinated into the very letter and spirit 
of the Scriptures. The true Scotsman — at least, 
since the time of Knox — has known nothing so 
well as his Bible. That he has read from his 
youth up, and in large measure committed to 
memory ; that has been his life's catechism. Of 
the nation it might be said, as it was of Timo- 
thy, " From a child thou hast known the holy 
scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto 
salvation." That knowledge has been like a fire 
in the bones of the Scottish people. It has taken 
possession of them and controlled them. Scottish 
Christianity from the beginning has been a living 
faith. It has been both a life and a doctrine 
moulding the entire character of the people. In 
other words, it has been a theology grounding 
itself on the word of God and on the sound 
philosophy of experience and common sense. 

This element of Scottish character has been 
strikingly presented by Hugh Miller in his fine 
volume First Impressions of England and its Peo- 
ple. After contrasting the strong characteristics 
of the common people of the two countries, he 
says : " It was religion alone that strengthened 
the character of the Scotch where it most needed 
strength, and enabled them to struggle against 
their native monarch and the aristocracy of the 
country, backed by all the power of the state, for 
more than a hundred years." To the question of 
an Englishman whom he met, and with whom he 



THE CHURCHES OF SCOTLAND. \Jl 

discussed the subject, " What good does all your 
theology do you ?" he replied, " Independently 
altogether of religious considerations, it has done 
for our people what all your societies for the dif- 
fusion of useful knowledge and all your Penny 
Magazines will never do for yours : it has awak- 
ened their intellects and taught them how to 
think. The development of the popular mind in 
Scotland is a result of its theology." The deeply- 
significant fact is that Christian theology, through 
its Sabbath worship, its pulpit ministrations, its 
weekly expositions of the word of God, its Church 
catechisms and its various schools of learning, has 
been, and is, the chief civilizing element of Scot- 
land — the one great educational influence over 
the young and the adult mind of its people. 
Scotland is to-day a standing demonstration to 
the world of what Christianity can do for a peo- 
ple, and can accomplish through them, when it 
is permitted to gain a complete ascendency in 
the land. 

The successive periods and movements in the 
Scottish Church during the whole three hundred 
years since the Reformation are well represented 
by their prominent leaders as given by Dr. W. M. 
Blackburn in his Church History. John Knox 
represents the Reformation, 1525— 1575 ; Andrew 
Melville, the introduction of a purer Presbyterian- 
ism, 1 575-1638; Alexander Henderson and Sam- 
uel Rutherford, the Solemn League and Covenant 



172 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

and the Westminster Confession, 1638-1660; Arch- 
bishops Robert Leighton and Sharpe, the enforce- 
ment of Episcopacy upon Scotland, 1660- 1688; 
William Carstares, the Restoration of Presbyte- 
rianism, 1690; Ebenezer Erskine, the tendencies 
to disruption, 1734; William Robertson, the mod- 
eration of the Established Church, 1750-1840; 
Alexander Duff, the spirit of missions, 1 800-1843; 
Thomas Chalmers, the Free Church, 1843. 

The controversy which led to this last disrup- 
tion of the old Establishment was of ten years' 
continuance, from 1833 to 1843. It grew out of 
the abuse of patronage and the interference of the 
civil courts, intruding a minister into a pastoral 
charge contrary to the will of the people, even 
when the presbytery had refused to install him. 
With singular infatuation the English govern- 
ment persisted in forcing this issue, so that all 
efforts to compromise the difficulties at last be- 
came fruitless. The great result is graphically 
set forth in the following paragraph from Dr. 
Blackburn's History: 

"The final issue came in 1843, in the General 
Assembly at Edinburgh, when that old city was 
full of excitement on one great question : Will 
these four hundred non-intrusionists secede from 
the Established Church ? Some said that not 
forty of them would go out. Dr. Welsh, the 
moderator, took the chair, invoked the divine 
Presence, and calmly said that the Assembly 



THE CHURCHES OE SCOTLAND. 1 73 

could not be properly constituted without violat- 
ing the terms of union between Church and State. 
He read a protest against any further proceedings, 
bowed to the representative of the Crown, stepped 
down into the aisle and walked toward the door. 
To follow him was to forsake the old Church, its 
livings, salaries, manses, pulpits and parishes. Dr. 
Chalmers had seemed like a lion in a reverie, and 
all eyes were turned upon him. Would he give 
up his chair of theology ? He seized his hat and 
took the new departure. After him went Gordon 
and Buchanan, Macfarlane and MacDonald, Guth- 
rie, Candlish and Cunningham, and more than four 
hundred ministers, with a host of elders. A cheer 
burst from the galleries. In the street the ex- 
pectant crowd parted and admired the heroic pro- 
cession as it passed. Jeffrey was sitting in his 
room quietly reading, when some one rushed in 
saying, ' What do you think ? More than four 
hundred of them have gone out.' Springing to 
his feet, he exclaimed, ' I am proud of my coun- 
try. There is not another land on earth where 
such a deed could have been done.' " 

The deed was in keeping with scenes that had 
often been witnessed in Scotland in the olden 
times, but for the nineteenth century it was cer- 
tainly a spectacle of sublime import, as demon- 
strating that spiritual Christianity was still a living 
power amongst men, and not an empty name. No 
stronger proof short of actual martyrdom could 



174 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

have been given that the Christianity of our day, 
as embodied in one of the leading Churches of 
Christendom, was more than an abstract theory, 
more than a genteel profession. Men saw that it 
was a grand principle of right and duty which 
could lead hundreds and thousands of educated 
people to sacrifice all earthly interests for truth's 
and conscience' sake. It was an argument and a 
vindication which even ungodly and worldly men 
could not fail to understand and profoundly re- 
spect. Both the Church and the world needed 
such a demonstration, and unquestionably the 
moral influence of it was felt to the ends of the 
earth. What Scotland thus did was not done in 
a corner : it was in the full light of the sun ; it 
was at the noontide of our century ; it was an act 
and a lesson for all mankind and for all coming 
history. The future alone can estimate its true 
dignity and its inestimable worth. 

The ministers of the British Crown just forty 
years ago stood powerless to prevent that great 
disruption or repair the injustice which their own 
egregious folly had forced upon an intelligent and 
conscientious Christian body, but since their day 
a far abler minister than Lord Aberdeen — Mr. 
Gladstone, one of the greatest statesmen of any 
age or nation — has taken occasion in the British 
Parliament publicly to vindicate the principles and 
the character of the band of Christian heroes who, 
with Welsh and Chalmers at their head, made the 



THE CHURCHES OE SCOTLAND. 1 75 

eighteenth day of May, 1843, memorable and 
glorious in the annals of Scotland. 

What followed this impressive separation from 
the old Church and inauguration of the Free 
Church of Scotland is thus briefly told by Dr. 
Hetherington : 

" On the Sabbath after the termination of the 
first General Assembly the ministers of the Free 
Church abstained from using their former places 
of worship, and preached in halls or barns or in 
the open air to audiences many times more nu- 
merous and unspeakably more intensely attentive 
than had ever before attended their ministrations. 
There were in their own devotions and instructions 
a fervor, a pathos and a spirituality to which they 
had rarely or never before attained, and their peo- 
ple gazed on them and listened to them with an 
earnest, sympathizing and admiring love which 
rendered every word precious and its impression 
deep and lasting. It may be safely said that the 
gospel was that day preached in Scotland to a 
greater number of eager and attentive auditors 
than had ever before listened to its hallowed mes- 
sage. And yet that was but the beginning. From 
Sabbath to Sabbath and almost every week-day 
evening the people sought to hear, and the minis- 
ters of the Free Church hastened to proclaim, the 
glad tidings of salvation. Nor did the remarkable 
avidity of the people to hear and willingness of 
the ministers to preach bear almost any reference 



176 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

to the recent controversy and its result, but both 
ministers and people felt themselves at last free, 
and they used that freedom in the service of their 
divine Lord and Master. Within two months after 
the disruption upward of two hundred and forty 
thousand pounds sterling had been subscribed, 
and nearly eight hundred associations formed. 
Churches in all directions began to be erected ; 
every minister and probationer was constrained 
to discharge double or threefold duty ; and still 
the demand continued to increase." 

From that day onward until now this last and 
freest of the Scottish Reformed Churches has had 
a steady increase, and has sent its evangelical in- 
fluences into every Christian land and into the 
dark regions of paganism. Nor in this has it 
stood alone. The other two great Scottish com- 
munions, the Established Church and the United 
Presbyterian Church, have been awakened to new 
life and activity in all the departments of Chris- 
tian work. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

SCO TTISH ART AND IND US TR Y. 

THE civilization of a nation is accurately 
measured by its advancement in the useful 
arts and economic industries of life. Upon these 
largely depend the production and diffusion of 
wealth among its people, their trade and com- 
merce with other nations, and much of that need- 
ful comfort and that higher refinement which 
make life at once enjoyable and desirable. It is 
also through this channel — this attainment and 
advance in useful art and industry — that a nation 
sends its creative influences far away to other na- 
tions and contributes powerfully to the general 
progress and civilization of the race. Of this 
potential influence of art and industry, both at 
home and abroad, no better illustration can be 
found in modern history than that furnished by 
the working and industrial classes of Scotland. 
During the present century at least, and for a 
large part of the preceding one, Scotland has 
been a busy working-hive of industry, and of 
useful invention in many of the most important 
arts. Vast coal-fields have been discovered and 

12 177 



1/8 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

the mineral resources of the country developed 
to an extent unknown to former ages. 

The growth of these great industries to their 
present immense proportions has been very grad- 
ual from their small beginnings nearly two centu- 
ries ago. They have, however, afforded scope for 
the practical and inventive genius of the Scottish 
people, and at the same time a wide field of em- 
ployment for large numbers of the laboring classes. 
While thousands of Scotsmen during these cen- 
turies, finding their native land too narrow, have 
been going abroad to seek useful occupation, other 
thousands have found new doors for remunerative 
toil constantly opening before them at home in 
coal- and iron-mining, in the manufacture of iron 
and steel, and that vast development of steam- 
ship building which has made Scotland to a good 
degree the builder of the navies of Great Britain 
and the world. It is an interesting history that 
traces this development from its early inception 
on the banks of the Forth and the Clyde and 
among the rugged Highland hills. It is one 
which strongly suggests that those picturesque 
scenes of beauty or of wild grandeur were not 
created alone for the pencil of the artist and the 
pen of poet and novelist, but with a deeper de- 
sign, as being the inexhaustible deposition of a 
material wealth that should give employment to 
millions and send its richness around the globe. 

In a valuable volume published by Mr. Samuel 



SCOTTISH ART AND INDUSTRY. 1 79 

Smiles in 1864, entitled Industrial Biography ; or, 
Iron-Workers and Tool-Makers \ we have a sketch 
of the prominent men, both English and Scottish, 
to whose genius and energy our present civiliza- 
tion is largely indebted for the development of 
these great sources of wealth and power. Many 
of them became from necessity inventors of im- 
proved instruments of mining, manufacture and 
shipbuilding. As such they are among the world's 
benefactors. Their implements and improved ma- 
chinery were no sooner tested by experiment than 
they became the property of other nations, and 
became the factors of useful industry in other 
lands. " The true epic of our time," says Car- 
lyle, " is not Arms and the Man, but Tools and 
the Man — an infinitely wider kind of epic." 

In the manufacture of Scottish iron John Roe- 
buck may be placed first on the list of pioneers 
and discoverers. He was not a native of Scot- 
land, but of Sheffield, England, where his father 
preceded him as a manufacturer of cutlery. He 
was, however, educated in part at the University 
of Edinburgh, where he applied himself to the 
study of medicine, and especially of chemistry ; 
and after graduating as a physician at Leyden, on 
the Continent, he determined to devote his life to 
industrial pursuits and to make Scotland the field 
of his operations. He first settled at Birming- 
ham, England, where for a while he pursued his 
medical profession and also made some important 



180 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

inventions in the methods of smelting iron and 
refining gold and silver, and then removed to the 
neighborhood of Edinburgh, near which place he 
established works for the preparation of vitriol 
on a large scale. There he also struck out new 
branches of industry with much success. Hav- 
ing determined to engage in the manufacture of 
iron, he formed a company for that purpose, in 
which he was joined by a number of his friends, 
and made choice of a suitable site for his works 
on the banks of the river Carron, in Stirlingshire, 
where there was an abundant supply of water and 
an inexhaustible supply of iron, coal and lime- 
stone in the immediate neighborhood. There 
Dr. Roebuck planted the first iron-works in Scot- 
land. He brought from England a large number 
of skilled workmen, who formed a nucleus of in- 
dustry at Carron, where their example and im- 
proved methods of working served to train the 
native laborers in their art ; and thus the business 
has been handed down to the present day. 

" The first furnace," says Mr. Smiles, " was 
blown at Carron on the first day of January, 
1760, and in the course of the same year the 
Carron Iron-Works turned out fifteen hundred 
tons of iron, then the whole annual produce of 
Scotland. Other furnaces shortly after were erect- 
ed on improved plans, and the production steadily 
increased." Out of this successful enterprise of 
the Carron works, Mr. Smiles tells us, " sprang, 



SCO TTISH ART AND IND US TR Y. 1 8 1 

in a great measure, the Forth and Clyde Canal, 
the first artificial navigation in Scotland." 

While this Carron foundry was pursuing its 
career of safe prosperity Dr. Roebuck's enter- 
prise led him to embark in coal-mining with the 
object of securing an improved supply of fuel for 
his iron-works. Finding all existing machinery 
inadequate for his purposes, Dr. Roebuck in 1768 
became associated with James Watt, a young 
mathematical-instrument maker of Glasgow, who 
had just invented a steam-engine of great power. 
The latter, at Dr. Roebuck's request, joined him at 
the extensive coal-mines at Boroughstones and set 
about the construction of the engines. Dr. Roe- 
buck, however, having sunk his whole fortune and 
that of his wife in these public- spirited ventures, was 
compelled to abandon all further schemes of im- 
provement. " He lived, however," says Mr. Smiles, 
" to witness the success of the steam-engine, the 
opening of the Boroughstones coal, and the rapid 
extension of the Scotch iron trade, though he 
shared in the prosperity of neither of those branches 
of industry. He had been working ahead of his 
age, and he suffered for it. He fell in the breach 
at the critical moment, and more fortunate men 
marched over his body into the fortress which 
his enterprise and valor had mainly contributed 
to win. Before his great undertaking of the Car- 
ron works, Scotland was entirely dependent upon 
other countries for its supply of iron ; in 1760, the 



1 82 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

first year of its operations, the whole produce was 
fifteen hundred tons. In course of time other 
iron-works were erected at Clyde, Cleugh-Muir- 
kirk and Devon, the managers and overseers of 
which, as well as the workmen, had mostly re- 
ceived their training and experience at Carron, 
until at length the iron trade of Scotland has 
assumed such a magnitude that its manufactur- 
ers are enabled to export to England and other 
countries upward of five hundred thousand tons 
a year. How different this state of things from 
the time when raids were made across the Border 
for the purpose of obtaining a store of iron plun- 
der to be carried back into Scotland !" 

These great mining and manufacturing enter- 
prises, which had been so nobly undertaken and 
developed by this indefatigable man during the 
last century, were carried to still greater perfec- 
tion by the inventive and mechanical genius of 
three worthy successors, all Scotsmen, who rose 
to eminence in their respective spheres during 
the present century. These were David Mu- 
shet, born at Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, in 1772; 
James Beaumont Neilson, born at Shettlestone, 
near Glasgow, in 1792 ; and James Nasmyth, born 
in Edinburgh in 1808. To these, indeed, may be 
added a fourth name equally distinguished for in- 
ventive genius and important contributions not 
only to the manufacture of iron, but to bridge 
and railway structures and to the building of 



SCOTTISH ART AND INDUSTRY. 1 83 

iron-clad steamships. This is William Fairbairn, 
who was born at Kelso in 1787. 

Mr. Smiles says, " The extraordinary expan- 
sion of the Scotch iron trade of late years has 
been mainly due to the discovery by David Mu- 
shet of the black-band iron-stone in 1801, and 
the invention of the hot blast by James Beau- 
mont Neilson in 1828." Mr. Mushet commenced 
his investigations and experiments at an early 
age, while connected with the Clyde Iron-Works, 
near Glasgow. It was while engaged in erecting 
for himself and partners the Calder Iron-Works, 
in the same vicinity, that he made the discovery 
(unsuspected before him) that the black-band stone 
was rich in mineral, containing more than fifty 
per cent, of protoxide of iron. " Yet that dis- 
covery," says Mr. Mushet, "has elevated Scotland 
to a considerable rank among the iron-making 
nations of Europe, with revenues still in store 
that may be considered inexhaustible." He made 
many useful discoveries in connection with the 
hot-blast furnace, the smelting of iron and man- 
ufacture of steel, and while he lived was regard- 
ed as a leading authority on these subjects. 

It was during his connection with the Glasgow 
gas-works that Mr. Neilson made his first experi- 
ments in the smelting of iron, and in 1828 he 
brought his wonderful discovery of the hot-air 
process to perfection. Its success was extraor- 
dinary. Mr. Mushet regarded it as one of the 



1 84 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

" most novel and beautiful improvements of the 
age." Others spoke of it as being " of as great 
advantage in the iron trade as Arkwright's ma- 
chinery was in the cotton-spinning trade." Mr. 
Fairbairn, in his article " Iron " in the Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica, says, " It has effected an entire 
revolution in the iron industry of Great Britain, 
and forms the last era in the history of this mate- 
rial." " The first trials of the process," says Mr. 
Smiles, " were made at the blast-furnaces of Clyde 
and Calder, from whence the use of the hot blast 
gradually extended to other iron mining districts. 
In the course of a few years every furnace in Scot- 
land, with one exception (that of Carron), had 
adopted the improvement ; while it was also em- 
ployed in half the furnaces of England and Wales, 
and in many of the furnaces on the Continent and 
in America." 

The utility of this valuable invention, both to 
Scotland and to the world, is well illustrated by 
the following paragraph from Mr. Smiles's vol- 
ume : " The invention of the hot blast in conjunc- 
tion with the discovery of the black-band iron- 
stone has had an extraordinary effect upon the 
development of the iron manufacture of Scotland. 
The coals of that country are generally unfit for 
coking, and lose as much as fifty per cent, in the 
process. But by using the hot blast the coal 
could be sent to the blast-furnace in its raw state, 
by which a large saving of fuel is effected. Even 



SCOTTISH ART AND INDUSTRY. 1 85 

coals of an inferior quality were by its means 
avai'able for the manufacture of iron. But one 
of the peculiar qualities of the black-band iron- 
stone is that in many cases it contains sufficient 
coaly matter for purposes of calcination without 
any admixture of coal whatever. Before its dis- 
covery all the iron manufactured in Scotland was 
made from clay-band, but the use of the latter 
has in a great measure been discontinued wher- 
ever a sufficient supply of black-band can be ob- 
tained. And it is found to exist very extensively 
in most of the midland Scotch counties, the coal 
and iron measures stretching in a broad belt from 
the Firth of Forth to the Irish Ch.innel at the Firth 
of Clyde. At the time when the hot blast was 
invented the fortunes of many of the older works 
were at a low ebb, and several of them had been 
discontinued ; but they were speedily brought to 
life again wherever black-band could be found. 
In 1829, the year Neilson's patent was taken out, 
the total make of Scotland was twenty-nine thou- 
sand tons. As fresh discoveries of the mineral 
were made in Ayrshire and Lanarkshire new 
works were erected, until in 1845 the production 
of Scottish pig-iron had increased to four hun- 
dred and seventy-five thousand tons. It has since 
increased to upward of a million of tons, nineteen- 
twentieths of which are made from band iron- 
stone. An immense additional value has been 
given to all land in which it is found. Employ- 



1 86 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

ment has thus been given to vast numbers of 
our industrial population, and the wealth and re- 
sources of the Scotch iron districts have been 
increased to an extraordinary extent. During 
the last year (1862) there were one hundred and 
twenty-five furnaces in blast throughout Scotland, 
each employing about four hundred men in mak- 
ing an average of two hundred tons a week ; and 
the money distributed amongst the workmen may 
readily be computed from the fact that under the 
most favorable circumstances the cost of making 
iron in wages alone amounts to thirty-six shil- 
lings a ton." 

The third of these successful workers in iron, 
James Nasmyth, belonged to a Scottish family 
several of whose members were highly distin- 
guished as artists. His father, Alexander Na- 
smyth of Edinburgh, was a landscape-painter of 
great eminence. His elder brother was an admi- 
rable portrait-painter. His sisters, following the 
line of the father's genius, became highly distin- 
guished as landscape-painters, and their works 
were much prized. James Nasmyth was him- 
self an excellent painter. He had received a 
sound and liberal education at the Edinburgh 
high school. His taste for the mechanic arts was 
so strong, however, even from early boyhood, 
that he determined to give himself to that line 
of industry. By the time he was fifteen he could 
work and turn out respectable jobs in wood, brass, 



SCOTTISH ART AND INDUSTRY. 1 87 

iron and steel. At that age he made a real work- 
ing steam-engine, one three-fourths inch diameter 
and eight-inch stroke, which not only could act, 
but did some useful work, for he made it grind 
the oil-colors which his father required for his 
painting. He found it both delightful and profit- 
able at that early age to make model steam-en- 
gines, which he sold at a good price, and thus 
purchased tickets of admission to the course of 
lectures on philosophy and chemistry at the uni- 
versity of his native city. 

Mr. Nasmyth was a man of profound intellect, 
and his useful inventions in the iron manufacture 
were all suggested to his original inquiring mind 
by the practical necessities of the business. When 
an obstacle hitherto insurmountable met him, he 
at once set himself to overcome it by creating a 
more powerful instrument. Such was the his- 
tory of his great steam-hammer. 

Mr. Smiles says : " If Mr. Nasmyth had accom- 
plished nothing more than the invention of the 
steam-hammer, it would have been enough to found 
a reputation. This invention is described by Pro- 
fessor Tomlinson, in the Cyclopedia of Useful Arts, 
as ' one of the most perfect of artificial machines, 
and one of the noblest triumphs of mind over 
matter that modern English engineers have yet 
developed.' When the use of iron extended and 
larger iron-work came to be forged, for cannon, 
tools and machinery, the ordinary hand hammer 



1 88 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

was found insufficient, and the helve or forge ham- 
mer was invented. This was usually driven by a 
waterwheel or by oxen or horses. The tilt-ham- 
mer was another form in which it was used, the 
smaller kinds being worked by the foot. Among 
Watt's various inventions was a tilt-hammer of 
considerable power, which he at first worked by 
means of a waterwheel and afterward by a steam- 
engine regulated by a fly-wheel. His first ham- 
mer of this kind was a hundred and twenty pounds 
in weight ; it was raised eight inches before making 
each blow. Watt afterward made a tilt-hammer 
for Mr. Wilkinson of Bradley Forge of seven and 
a half hundredweight, and it made three hundred 
blows a minute. Other improvements were made 
in the hammer from time to time, but no material 
alteration was made in the power by which it was 
worked until Mr. Nasmyth took it in hand, and, 
applying to it the force of steam, at once provided 
the worker in iron with one of the most formida- 
ble of machine tools." 

Farther on in his interesting volume Mr. Smiles 
describes the inauguration of this wonder-working 
instrument whose mighty tread has now been 
heard in all iron-producing countries : " The first 
hammer of thirty hundredweight was made for 
Patricott Works with the consent of the partners, 
and in the course of a few weeks it was in full 
work. The precision and beauty of its action, the 
perfect ease with which it was managed and the 



SCOTTISH ART AND INDUSTRY. 1 89 

untiring force of its percussive blows were the ad- 
miration of all who saw it, and from that moment 
the steam-hammer became a recognized power in 
modern mechanics. The variety and gradation 
of its blows were such that it was found practica- 
ble to manipulate a hammer of ten tons as easily 
as if it had only been of ten ounces weight It 
was under such complete control that while de- 
scending with its greatest momentum it could be 
arrested at any point with even greater ease than 
any instrument used by hand. While capable of 
forging an Armstrong hundred pounder or the 
sheet anchor for a ship-of-the-line, it could ham- 
mer a nail, or crack a nut without bruising the 
kernel. Its advantages were so obvious that its 
adoption soon became general, and in the course 
of a few years Nasmyth steam-hammers were to 
be found in every well-appointed workshop, both 
at home and abroad." 

Mr. Nasmyth, after making an adequate fortune 
by his industry and inventions in the iron manu- 
facture, retired from active business in 1856, and 
devoted his later years to the study of astronomy 
and other branches of science. He was a practi- 
cal discoverer in this new field, and became almost 
as much distinguished as an astronomer as he had 
been as an engineer and inventor. By new tele- 
scopes of great power, constructed by himself, he 
instituted a series of observations on the crater 
of the moon, and also on the surface and spots of 



I90 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

the sun, which resulted in some remarkable dis- 
coveries. These, when first published in the sci- 
entific journals of the time, seemed almost incred- 
ible, but they were afterward confirmed by the 
observations of other scientists and fully recog- 
nized by Sir John Herschel and other eminent 
astronomers. 

An interesting story is related by the author 
from whom most of these facts are taken as to the 
origin of the unusual name of this Scottish family. 
It goes back to the time of the old feuds between the 
kings of Scotland and their powerful subjects the 
earls of Douglas. On one occasion a rencounter 
took place near a border village, in which the kings 
adherents were worsted. Taking refuge in the vil- 
lage smithy, one of them hastily disguised himself 
and, donning a spare leathern apron, pretended to be 
engaged in assisting the smith at his work. A 
party of the Douglas men soon rushed in, and, 
glancing at the pretended workman at the anvil, 
they saw him strike a blow so unskillfully that the 
hammer-shaft broke in his hand. On this one of 
the Douglas followers rushed at him, calling out, 
" Ye're nae smyth." The assailed man, seizing 
his sword, which lay conveniently near, defended 
himself so vigorously that he soon killed his as- 
sailant, while the smith brained another with his 
hammer. A party of the king's men having come 
to their help, the rest were speedily overpowered. 
The royal forces then rallied, and their temporary 



SCOTTISH ART AND INDUSTRY. 191 

defeat was converted into a victory. The king 
bestowed a grant of land on his follower " nae- 
smyth," who assumed for his arms a sword between 
two hammers with broken shafts, and the motto, 
" Non Arte sed Marte," as. if to disclaim the art 
of the smith, in which he had failed, and to em- 
phasize the superiority of the warrior, in which 
capacity he had excelled. 

" Such," adds Mr. Smiles, " is said to be the 
traditional origin of the family of Naesmyth of 
Posso, in Peeblesshire, who continue to bear the 
same name and arms. It is remarkable that the 
inventor of the steam-hammer should have so 
effectually contradicted the name he bears and 
reversed the motto of his family ; for, so far from 
being ' nae smyth,' he may not inappropriately be 
designated the very Vulcan of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. His hammer is a tool of immense power 
and pliancy but for which we must have stopped 
short in many of those gigantic engineering works 
which are among the marvels of the age we live 
in. It possesses so much precision and delicacy 
that it will clip the end of an egg resting in a 
glass on the anvil without breaking it, while it 
delivers a blow of ten tons with such a force as 
to be felt shaking the parish. It is therefore with 
a high degree of appropriateness that Mr. Na- 
smyth has discarded the feckless hammer with the 
broken shaft, and assumed for his emblem his own 
magnificent steam-hammer, at the same time re- 



I92 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

versing the family motto, which he has converted 
into ' Non Marte sed Arte.' " 

The author closes his fine sketch of this gifted 
man and truly representative North Briton of our 
period by telling us that some two hundred years 
ago a member of the Nasmyth family, Jean Na- 
smyth of Hamilton, was burnt for a witch — one 
of the last martyrs to ignorance and superstition 
in Scotland — because she read her Bible with two 
pairs of spectacles. " Had Mr. Nasmyth himself 
lived then, he might with his two telescopes of his 
own making, which bring the sun and the moon 
into his chamber for him to examine and paint, 
have been taken for a sorcerer; but, fortunately 
for him, and still more so for us, Mr. Nasmyth 
stands before the public of this age as not only 
one of its ablest mechanics, but as one of the most 
accomplished and original of scientific observers." 

One of the most influential and successful of the 
mechanical engineers of the present century was 
William Fairbairn, who from humble beginnings 
worked his way up to the highest distinction. He 
was of Scottish birth and training and to a great 
degree self-educated, but, like many of his coun- 
trymen, his life was largely spent in England, 
where many of his useful experiments and im- 
provements were made. Finding no opening for 
employment in his native land, he tried in tur 1 to 
gain a foothold in London, Dublin, New Castle 
and other places, and at last established himself at 




SCOTTISH ART AND INDUSTRY. 1 93 

Manchester, where he spent his life. Here he 
became the head of a business firm for the con- 
struction of bridges, mills, iron buildings, and 
iron machinery in general, which eventually be- 
came known all over the civilized world. He 
was the builder of the first iron house erected in 
England, and his wonderful improvements in the 
structure of mills and water-wheels led to an en- 
tire revolution in that line of industry. " His im- 
provements formed an era in the history of mill- 
machinery, and exercised the most important in- 
fluence on the development of the cotton, flax, 
silk and other branches of manufacture." 

" His labors," says Mr. Smiles, " were not, how- 
ever, confined to his own particular calling as a 
mill-engineer, but were shortly directed to other 
equally important branches of the constructive 
art. He was among the first to direct his atten- 
tion to iron-ship building as a special branch of 
business." Having satisfied himself by experi- 
ments, Mr. Fairbairn in 1 831 proceeded to con- 
struct at his works, at Manchester, an iron ves- 
sel, which went to sea the same year. " Its suc- 
cess was such as to induce him to begin iron- 
ship building on a large scale at the same time as 
the Messrs. Laird did at Birkenhead, and, in 1835, 
Mr. Fairbairn established extensive works at Mill- 
wall, on the Thames — afterward occupied by Mr. 
Scott Russell, in whose yard the Great Eastern 
steamship was erected — where, in tlie course of 
13 



194 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE 

some fourteen years, he built more than a hundred 
and twenty iron ships, some of them above two 
thousand tons burden. It was, in fact, the first 
great iron-ship building yard in Britain, and led 
the way in a branch of the business which has 
since become of first-rate magnitude and import- 
ance. Mr. Fairbairn was a most laborious experi- 
menter in iron, and investigated in great detail the 
subject of its strength, the value of different kinds 
of riveted joints compared with the solid plates, 
and the distribution of the material throughout the 
structure, as well as the form of the vessel itself. 
It would, indeed, be difficult to overestimate the 
value of his investigations on these points in the 
earlier stages of this now highly important branch 
of the national industry." 

Mr. Fairbairn's practical and experimental 
knowledge of all matters connected with the 
qualities and strength of iron, and his great au- 
thority derived from many successful discoveries 
and inventions in the manufacture and use of it, 
led the British government to seek information 
from his inquiries as to the construction of iron- 
plated vessels of war. His thorough knowledge 
of wrought iron in all its applications naturally 
led to his being called in as a counselor by 
Robert Stevenson when it was proposed to span 
the estuary of the Conway and the Straits of 
Menai by an iron structure. The results were the 
world-renowned Conway and Britannia tubular 






SCOTTISH ART AND INDUSTRY. I95 

bridges. "There is no reason to doubt," says 
Mr. Smiles, " that by far the largest share of the 
merit of working out the practical details of those 
structures, and thus realizing Robert Stevenson's 
magnificent idea of the tubular bridge, belonged 
to Mr. Fairbairn." 

There can be no question that iron has played 
an important part in the progress of civilization, 
and it is easy to see from these and other records 
that Scotsmen have played no inconsiderable part 
in that progress, whether it regards the discovery, 
the manufacture or the application of iron to the 
great industrial arts. " The mechanical operations 
of the present day," says Mr. Fairbairn, " could 
not have been accomplished at any cost thirty 
years ago, and what was then considered impos- 
sible is now performed with an exactitude that 
never fails to accomplish the end in view." " We 
are daily producing from the bowels of the earth," 
says Mr. Stevenson, " a raw material in its crude 
state apparently of no worth, but which when con- 
verted into a locomotive-engine flies over bridges 
of the same material with a speed exceeding that 
of the # bird, advancing wealth and comfort through- 
out the country. Such are the powers of that all- 
civilizing instrument iron." One of the marvels 
of the age in which we live is this diversified and 
almost universal application of iron to the indus- 
tries and the arts of life. Since the advent of these 
great iron discoverers and inventors the world has 



I96 SCOTLAND'S I NFL UE AXE. 

assumed a new aspect unknown to former history, 
unimagined in poetry or fiction. The continents 
are belted by railroad iron. The surface of every 
ocean is ploughed by iron-clad steamers, and their 
silent ocean-beds feel the pressure of electric wires 
carrying intelligence from shore to shore. " Since 
then," wrote Mr. Smiles twenty years ago, " iron 
structures of all kinds have been erected — iron 
lighthouses, iron-and-crystal palaces, iron churches 
and iron bridges. Iron roads have long been 
worked by iron locomotives, and before many 
years have passed a telegraph of iron wire will 
probably be found circling the globe. We now 
use iron roofs, iron bedsteads, iron ropes and iron 
pavement, and even the famous wooden walls of 
England are rapidly becoming reconstructed of 
iron. In short, we are in the midst of what Mr. 
Worsaae has characterized as the Age of Iron." 
Another great industry of Scotland, which dur- 
ing the present century has grown into national 
importance and sent its influences around the 
globe, is that of shipbuilding and steam-naviga- 
tion. It may be ranked next to the earlier and 
more widely ramified industries of coal and iron, 
with which, in fact, it is closely connected. It 
has its principal centre of operation on the river 
Clyde, near and below Glasgow. It has contrib- 
uted largely to the development of this Western 
metropolis and made it, along with other influ- 
ences, one of the chief commercial and industrial 



SCOTTISH ART AND INDUSTRY. 1 97 

centres of Great Britain. " Situated in a district 
rich in coal and iron, Nature gave to Glasgow 
splendid opportunities for wealth and power, and 
its energetic inhabitants have known how to use 
them. In 1871 the city had reached a pop- 
ulation of five hundred and forty-seven thousand 
five hundred and forty-eight, with two millions of 
spindles in its great cotton-mills and an annual 
consumption of a hundred and twenty thousand 
bales of cotton. In addition to its extensive man- 
ufactories for iron, cotton, glass and chemicals, it 
is the centre of the tobacco trade, the sugar trade 
and the cotton trade, while its vast industry, ex- 
pended in the construction of steam- and iron-clad 
ships for Great Britain and other nations, has 
raised it to an industrial position surpassed by 
that of no other city in the world. It has been 
appropriately styled the metropolis of industry and 
commerce, whose merchants are princes, whose 
traffickers are the honorable of the earth." 

In 181 1 the first steam- vessel was built on the 
Clyde by Henry Bell, and the next year began to 
run on that river between Glasgow and Greenock 
at the rate of five miles an hour against a strong 
head-wind. Although our own countryman Rob- 
ert Fulton had antedated this a few years by his 
successful navigation of the Hudson between 
New York and Albany in 1807, yet the Clyde 
may well be regarded as the cradle of steam-navi- 
gation. The Clyde, if it did not take the lead in 



I98 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

point of time, has unquestionably done more for 
marine architecture than any other river in the 
world. This once tortuous little stream, " full of 
rock-beds, fords and shallows," has been deepened 
and widened by an outlay of energy, and capital 
and engineering skill bestowed on no other river, 
until it has become " one of the noblest highways 
of commerce in the world, adapted to all the 
exigences and ends of navigation." Here since 
181 1 have been completed all those important 
practical inventions and improvements which have 
brought the art of shipbuilding to its present vast 
proportions and its almost perfect facilities. Says 
Mr. J. S. Jeans, writing for the Practical Maga- 
zine of 1874: "No inventions connected with or 
affecting marine architecture are at all comparable 
with those of the initial application of steam to 
navigation, the construction of ships of iron, the 
use of the screw-propeller, and the substitution 
of compound for other engines. In each of these 
leading and essential stages of improvement the 
Clyde stands out more conspicuously than any 
other river. The ' Clyde clippers ' are known all 
over the world. The value of the vessels built on 
the Clyde in the last ten years is the colossal sum 
of forty millions of pounds sterling. At the present 
time there are upward of thirty separate shipbuild- 
ing establishments on the Clyde between Ruther- 
glen and Greenock, both inclusive. The largest 
and oldest of these are the yards of John Elder, 



SCOTTISH ART AND INDUSTRY. 1 99 

Robert Napier, Barcklay & Carle, Tod & Mac- 
gregor, Alexander Stephenson & Son." 

The time when the first steamship crossed the 
Atlantic was in 1 8 19. It was the Savannah, 
built on the Clyde, and took twenty-six days for 
the voyage. In 1835, Dr. Lardner in a public 
scientific lecture proclaimed the impossibility of 
Atlantic navigation by steam in consequence of 
its too costly consumption of fuel. Yet in 1839 
the Great Western — another vessel built on the 
Clyde — had made the outward and the home 
voyages so successfully as to time and cost as 
to demonstrate the feasibility of ocean steam- 
navigation by practically inaugurating it. Now 
great lines of steamers are ploughing every ocean 
and connecting all the continents. While steam- 
vessels are now constructed on the Mersey and 
at other places in Great Britain and Continental 
Europe, and also in our own country, the Clyde 
still holds its supremacy in shipbuilding. In 1874 
there were nine hundred vessels belonging to the 
port of Glasgow, with a tonnage of five hundred 
thousand tons. All the largest steamers of the 
old Cunard company, ranging from two thousand 
to four thousand tons burden, are built on the 
Clyde, and all the leading ship companies in the 
world have many of their best vessels built here. 
For many miles the Clyde is a great forest of 
masts and smokestacks, while both banks of the 
river form continuous lines of workshops, forges, 



200 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

furnaces, ship-docks and yards, giving employ- 
ment to not less than fifty thousand operatives. 
Mr. Jeans, from whose valuable article in the 
Practical Magazine most of these facts are taken, 
gives us the following description of the busy 
scene which greets the eye of a visitor to the 
Clyde : " There is no more interesting sight to one 
impressed with the importance of the industrial 
arts than a voyage down the Clyde. Strangers, 
as a rule, are totally unprepared for the wonder- 
ful display of industrial activity which they wit- 
ness on all sides in their course between Glasgow 
and Greenock. Immediately after leaving the 
Broomielaw the thud of the ponderous steam- 
hammer, the clang of the ship- and boiler-plates 
under manipulation, the quick and intermittent 
noise of the riveters, the harsh and grating sound 
of the sawyers, and many other forms and com- 
binations of the music of labor, strike upon the 
ear. A little farther down and the Babel of sound 
becomes still louder, harsher and more confusing. 
In quick succession the vayageur passes on the 
one side the works of the London and Glasgow 
Shipbuilding Company, of R. Napier & Sons, of 
John Elder & Co. and of Alexander Stephenson & 
Sons, while on the other are the works of Barclay, 
Carle & Co., Messrs. A. & J. Inglis, Tod & Mac- 
gregor, Thomas Wingate, Charles Connel & Co. 
and Messrs. Aitkin & Mansel. After having run 
the gauntlet of these establishments, there is an in- 



SCOTTISH ART AND INDUSTRY. 201 

terval of green fields and finely-timbered haughts, 
in passing through which a grateful repose is en- 
joyed, although it is still possible to hear, fainter 
and yet more faint, the cadences of the busy scene 
through which we have just passed. A little far- 
ther on and we reach Renfrew, where Messrs. W. 
Simons & Co. and Messrs. Henderson & Coul- 
born carry on large works ; and on the opposite 
shore we next reach Dumbarton, famous in the 
days of yore for its wooden argosies, but now 
rivaling any port on the Clyde with the extensive 
and well-equipped shipbuilding works of Messrs. 
Denny Brothers and Messrs. A. McMillan & Co. 
From this point the charming beauties of the 
Clyde begin to unfold themselves, and serve to 
fascinate the mind and lead contemplation into 
other channels, until once again the indulgence 
of aesthetic taste is diverted by the industrial as- 
pects of Port Glasgow and Greenock, where 59m e 
of the oldest shipbuilding yards on the Clyde may 
be seen in active operation. The whole journey is 
fraught with bewilderment and wonder. Strangers 
are not always prepared for the fact that the Clyde, 
which is known far and near as one of the most 
beautiful of rivers, should at the same time be so 
distinguished for active and prosperous industry." 
The man to whose mechanical genius and pub- 
lic spirit all these vast works on the Clyde are 
probably more indebted for their present stage 
of advancement than to any one else was Rob- 



202 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

ert Napier. There were earlier engineers and dis- 
coverers, as Watt, Bell and Wilson, who opened 
the way by their inventive skill for what was to 
follow. In more recent times no one has done 
more to develop resources and lead the way to 
success in new paths than Mr. Napier. He was 
born at Dumbarton, twelve miles from Glasgow, 
in 1 791. His father was a blacksmith and he 
served his apprenticeship in the father's shop, 
showing early such aptness for the trade that it 
was pithily remarked that the boy was "born 
with a hammer in his hand." He acquired in 
early life both a practical and a theoretical knowl- 
edge of everything connected with shipbuilding, 
and his name is intimately associated with all 
those great improvements which have given to 
the Clyde its pre-eminence in that line of indus- 
try. Besides his mechanical and constructive 
ability, Mr. Napier showed through his success- 
ful career an organizing and administrative capa- 
city which made him the worthy compeer of such 
eminent architects and builders as Mr. Reed, the 
chief constructor of the navy, and Mr. John Laird, 
the greatest constructor of iron vessels in the 
world. As early as 18 18, Mr. Robert Wilson had 
built a small vessel of iron to run as a passenger- 
boat in the Forth and Clyde Canal, and this was 
probably the first iron vessel constructed. In 
1829, Mr. John Laird of Birkenhead constructed 
at his works on the Mersey, near Liverpool, the 



SCOTTISH ART AND INDUSTRY. 203 

first iron ship — the precursor of more than four 
hundred great iron ships which he lived to see 
finished at those famous works. To Mr. Laird's 
remarkable genius must be accorded the distinc- 
tion of introducing that important change from 
wood to iron in the art of shipbuilding which in 
our time has turned the wooden walls of Britain 
into walls of iron and steel, and has remodeled to 
an indefinite degree the navies of all the great 
nations of the world. 

Mr. Napier's work on the Clyde was different, 
but certainly not less useful and important in its 
influence on the arts of peaceful industry and the 
progress of human civilization. In the year 1840 
he projected and built at his works on the Clyde, 
for Sir Samuel Cunard, the first four steamers of the 
now famous Cunard line. These were the Britan- 
nica, the Arcadia, the Caledonia and the Columbia, 
all ranging between one and two thousand tons 
burden. They crossed the Atlantic in a voyage of 
about two weeks, and thus inaugurated those reg- 
ular lines of steamers which have since become 
numerous on all the great seas and oceans. For 
some years Mr. Napier supplied all the vessels of 
this Cunard line, though in more recent times the 
chief contractors of this line have been James & 
G. Thompson at Dumbarton. 

During the last ten years great advances have 
been made in the construction of these floating 
palaces of the ocean, some of them reaching a 



204 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

capacity of six thousand tons and a velocity that 
impels them across the Atlantic in seven or eight 
days. But the influence of Mr. Napier's success- 
ful pioneering on the first great line is well illus- 
trated by the following paragraph from a sketch 
of his life in the Practical Magazine of 1874 : " It 
is now conceded on all hands that the Cunard 
steam fleet is the finest in the world, and the ope- 
rations of the company have been successful be- 
yond all precedent. The company possesses at the 
present time between forty and fifty vessels afloat 
or in process of construction. Some of their ships 
are over four thousand tons burden, and the ag- 
gregate of the whole is about ninety thousand tons. 
Some idea of the capital invested in this magnif- 
icent fleet may be gathered from the fact that the 
average cost of the construction and equipment of 
a Cunard liner is one hundred thousand pounds 
sterling. The exemption of this line from mis- 
adventure is not only beyond all precedent, but is 
also among the greatest phenomena of the shipping 
trade. For upward of thirty years a Cunard liner 
has sailed from Liverpool to New York, at first 
once a week, then twice a week, and more recent- 
ly three times a week, while the same number 
have been run from New York to Liverpool. 
But the Cunard captains appear to have mastered 
the domain of old Neptune, for during all that 
long period they have never lost either a life or 
a letter." 



SCOTTISH ART AND INDUSTRY. 205 

Mr. Napier received from time to time high 
honors, from both Great Britain and other coun- 
tries, in recognition of the eminent services he 
had rendered to steam-navigation. He had won 
them fairly, and no man of our day deserves 
them better. At the Paris Exhibition of 1855 he 
received the prize of a great gold medal and was 
made " chevalier of the Legion of Honor." In 
1862 and 1865 similar prizes were awarded him 
in London and Paris. In 1869 he received from 
the king of Denmark the honor of a " commander 
of the Most Ancient Order of the Danneborg." 
In 1874, Mr. Napier had retired from active busi- 
ness and was living in comfort and elegance in his 
noble residence on the banks of the Garelock. 

The facts brought to view in this chapter are 
sufficient to illustrate what part Scotland has borne 
in the development of some of the most important 
arts and industries in the world. The Scottish 
people have been no laggards in the chase for 
wealth and fortune, no mere spectators in the race 
of improvement and distinction. Their lot has 
been cast in a small and comparatively rugged 
land, where nothing less than hard work and untir- 
ing industry could win the prizes of affluence and 
honor. But such as it was they have accepted it 
and made the most of the situation. They have 
made many a forbidding nook and corner to yield 
its hidden riches and to blossom as the rose. 
When hard work and industry could make those 



206 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

talents productive, they have never been con- 
tent to lay up in a napkin the one talent or the 
five talents that God has given. Nor have they 
been content with simply improving their own 
country and increasing their own stores : much 
that they have done has contributed largely to the 
increase of other lands and to the general advance- 
ment of our highest civilization. They have not 
been slow to follow others when others have first 
found a better way, but, as we have seen in these 
pages, they have themselves oftentimes been the 
earliest pioneers of progress. In the great indus- 
tries of coal-mining, iron-manufacture, shipbuilding 
and steam-navigation, from the days of Watt and 
Roebuck to those of Bell, Wilson, Nasmyth and 
Napier, they have been the avant couriers that led 
the march of the whole world's progress. The 
sound of their great hammers of industry has gone 
out through all the nations, and their globe-encir- 
cling lines of ocean-steamers are helping to fulfill 
the ancient prophecy — that " many shall run to 
and fro and knowledge shall be increased." 

In working out the problem of national great- 
ness, and the wider problem of Christian civiliza- 
tion, art and industry are factors not to be de- 
spised. They have always held an essential place, 
and they hold it still. Every great improvement 
achieved by art and industry, wherever made, is a 
gain for the gospel of truth and a step in advance 
toward the final triumph of Christianity. By these 



SCO TTISH ART A ND_ IND US TR Y. 207 

labor becomes power and wages become produc- 
tive capital. Skilled labor in the hands of thrifty, 
competent, industrious artisans is one of the un- 
failing sources of national prosperity and one of 
the surest indications of an advancing civilization. 
" Our strength, wealth and commerce," said Mr. 
Cobden, "grow out of the skilled labor of the men 
working in metals." Estimated by the standard 
of this eminent statesman, it is easy to see that the 
fifty thousand skilled laborers on the Clyde, and 
the uncounted thousands of equally skilled artisans 
in all other departments of Scottish industry in 
every part of the land, are not laboring in vain, 
but contributing their full share of influence to- 
ward the complete and final consummation. As 
we speed the plough and speed the hammer, speed 
the steam-car and speed the steamship, in every 
clime, beneath every sky, by night and by day, we 
are but speeding the gospel with the sun and pre- 
paring for that long-expected time when the taber- 
nacle of God shall be with men and the whole 
world be filled with the glory of the Lord even as 
the waters cover the great deep. No true service 
is in vain, no productive energy is wasted, no step 
of progress is lost. All great and true work every- 
where is so much gained for God and man, and 
goes to form the coming time and the coming 
world — that " new heavens and new earth wherein 
dwelleth righteousness." 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE SCOT ABROAD; OR, INFLUENCE OF SCOT 
LAND ON AMERICA AND OTHER LANDS. 

THE picture of what the Scotsman has been 
and of what he has done on his native soil 
would not be quite complete without some descrip- 
tion, however brief, of his achievements abroad. 
It would be a curious chapter indeed which should 
tell us of all his doings and all his migrations — 
his adventurous wanderings over sea and land, his 
daring inquests after fortune wherever fortune 
might be found, his enterprising industries in all 
civilized nations and his thriving colonies on many 
an inhospitable and savage shore. It would be 
difficult to say where the Scotsman has not gone, 
and wherever he has gone, as a general rule, he 
has gone to stay — at least, until he was able to re- 
turn full-handed. He has acted on the principle 
that our planet was made to be possessed and im- 
proved by civilized men, and there are not many 
climes, however uninviting at first, in which he 
has not found a lodgment and taken root, and 
which he has not made the better by reason of 
his being there. 

203 



THE SCOT ABROAD. 200, 

The whole story of what Scotsmen have done 
abroad would, in fact, widen itself out into the 
colonial, political, missionary and commercial his- 
tory of modern times ; for there are not many trad- 
ing-posts in British America, or missionary stations 
on continent and island, or flourishing colonies 
within the wide migrations of the English-speak- 
ing race, where the bold and hardy sons of Scotland 
have not lent a helping hand. They are to be found 
in all parts of India ; they have pushed their explor- 
ing way through and through the Dark Continent 
and founded missionary stations on its eastern and 
southern coasts. They have built up flourishing 
communities and churches in Tasmania, Victoria, 
Queensland, New South Wales and other provinces 
of Australia, and have borne a part in the civiliza- 
tion and colonization of New Zealand and the 
scattered Polynesian world. From an early period 
they have formed a constituent element in the set- 
tlement and development of New Brunswick, Nova 
Scotia and the Canadas. In the whole history 
and growth of the United States no European 
nationality has contributed a more important part 
than the Scotch and their nearest kindred, the 
Scotch-Irish. 

Of course, Scotland could never have held 
within its narrow bounds an athletic and enter- 
prising race like this when once it had tasted the 
tree of knowledge and gotten hold of that intel- 
lectual and moral power which fitted it for a wider 

14 



2 I O SCO TL A A 'D - S I. \ FL I r ENCE. 

sphere. It was inevitable that so confined a ter- 
ritory should lose its educated sons and daugh- 
ters, and that they should find their way to all 
parts of the earth where fortune was to be made 
by industry, or battles won by valor, or where 
power and distinction were to be gained by intelli- 
gence and character. A hive so full of life and 
active energy could not help swarming. 

One of the most prominent characteristics of 
the Scotch emigrant in every land is that he has 
always carried his Christian principles with him. 
They were too deeply inwrought by the home- 
training into every fibre of his being to be easily 
laid aside. Hence, in every country where he 
has made his dwelling-place, he has sought to 
plant his own ideas and to build up his own in- 
stitutions of religion and education. By the law 
of his being he has been a propagandist, a teach- 
er, a missionary, as well as a worker. From his 
youth he has been a believer in the Bible, the 
church, the school, the college. What was good 
for Scotland he has held to be good for other 
lands. Hence, among heathen tribes, to the ex- 
tent of his influence and example, he has always 
appeared in the character of a teacher and civil- 
izer. And the civilization introduced by him has 
not been more distinctly Scottish than it has been 
Christian. 

Nothing could better illustrate the Christian 
and educational influences carried by Scottish 



THE SCOT ABROAD. 211 

emigrants and missionaries to the ends of the 
earth than the history of the British colonies in 
the great island-continent of Australia. There a 
grand Christian empire, whose geographical area 
is nearly equal to Europe, has been rising within 
the southern hemisphere since the opening of the 
present century. Its principal growth has been 
by English-speaking colonists and missionaries 
of Christian churches in the British isles, and in 
that colonization Scotland has borne no inconsid- 
erable part. " One hundred years ago," said a 
delegate from Australia to the Edinburgh Pan- 
Presbyterian Council of 1877, the Rev. Alexander 
J. Campbell, "when the American States were sep- 
arating themselves and their destinies from Great 
Britain, God put into Scotland's hands the conti- 
nent of Australia. ' Go there,' he seemed to say to 
her, ' to that vast habitable land ; fill it with men, 
and, instructed by the experience of the past, rear 
there a Christian nation self-controlled and free.' " 
The first Presbyterian minister who made a per- 
manent settlement in the country, in 1823, was 
from the Church of Scotland, and he for many 
years stood alone. This was the Rev. John Dun- 
more Lang, D. D., an eminent scholar and divine, 
who by his faithful toil and repeated visits to the 
mother-country did much to place the new col- 
ony on a career of successful development. 

Since that day Australia has been explored, 
settled with emigrants and divided into seven or 



212 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

eight great provinces with an aggregate popula- 
tion of more than a million of souls. After the 
progress of about half a century, as shown by 
reports made to the Presbyterian Council of 1883, 
the Presbyterian population alone, aside from the 
Episcopal, Wesleyan and other communions, had 
increased to two hundred thousand, with organ- 
ized congregations, settled ministers, schools and 
colleges, active evangelists and good church edi- 
fices in each province. The older of these prov- 
inces, as Victoria and New South Wales, not only 
have their flourishing and self-sustaining churches, 
but their colleges and theological halls for the 
training of ministers, and their boards of foreign 
and domestic missions for the once pagan islands 
of the New Hebrides and for the aboriginal inhab- 
itants of Australia, All these churches, presby- 
teries and synods, with their schools of learning, 
are modeled after those of the mother-country, 
and are in thorough, sympathy with the doctri- 
nal and ecclesiastical standards of the Scottish 
Churches. So great has been the influence of 
Scotland over the people of the country that Aus- 
tralia, with its Bibles, its Sabbaths, its churches 
and its schools, might be styled the Scotland of 
the southern hemisphere. 

It was an interesting circumstance, as illustrat- 
ing the progress of civilization around the globe, 
that representatives should be sent from the 
churches of this far-off ocean-world to the first 



THE SCOT ABROAD. 21 3 

cosmopolitan council of the scattered Presbyte- 
rian family. And it seemed eminently fitting that 
this gathering of all the Presbyterian descendants 
from the original stock should celebrate the re- 
union by a first session at the old St. Giles church, 
Edinburgh, the venerable mother of all the family. 
How glorious did it fulfill and verify the ancient 
prophecy that the " Messiah should have domin- 
ion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends 
of the earth," and that the " uttermost parts of 
the earth should be given to him for his posses- 
sion." When those children from southern skies 
and recently unknown lands left their distant an- 
tipodal homes to meet at the old hearthstone of 
the Covenant, and there mingle their songs and 
their thanksgivings with their brethren of the 
North and the Western States and of old Euro- 
pean nations, what an illustration was it of Isaiah's 
inspired words, " The Lord hath made bare his 
holy arm in the eyes of all the nations ; and all 
the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of 
our God " ! 

The western continent, through its wide domains 
of British America, the United States and the West 
Indies, bears the impress of Scottish names and 
Scottish character. Not only has the Nova Scotia 
of the West, but all parts of our own country have 
likewise, had the benefit in their early settlement, 
as in later years, of a steady influx of thrifty, intel- 
ligent and hardy immigrants from Scotland, some- 



214 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

times forming small local colonies of their own, but 
more frequently mingling as constituent elements 
in the English-speaking population of the country. 
The Dominion of Canada, now comprising seven 
provinces and stretching entirely across the conti- 
nent from the maritime provinces of Nova Scotia 
and New Brunswick to the Pacific coast, drew a 
large part of its original colonists from France; 
and of its population to-day of three millions and 
three-quarters about one-half are Roman Catho- 
lics. As reported to the Edinburgh Council of 
1877 by James Croil, Esq., of Montreal, the Presby- 
terian, Episcopal and Methodist Churches in Can- 
ada claim altogether a population of one million 
and three-quarters in nearly equal proportions, the 
Baptists one-quarter of a million, leaving another 
quarter of a million to Congregationalists, Luther- 
ans and other denominations. This Presbyterian 
population was at the first chiefly from Scotland 
and the North of Ireland. The Presbyterian 
Church of Canada in its earlier history obtained 
its chief supply of ministers from Scotland and 
the North of Ireland. Hence the Canadian Pres- 
byterianism has always been of the Scottish type. 
Until recently, however, it has had its shades of 
difference and all the divisions that appeared in 
the mother-countries. 

In process of time the Scottish Presbyterianism, 
both of the Establishment, the United Presbyterian 
and the Free Church, found a congenial home and 



THE SCOT ABROAD. 215 

took deep root in several of the provinces of Can- 
ada. In 1867 the political confederation of all 
the provinces which now constitute the Dominion 
of Canada was happily brought about. There 
sprung up at once, in unison with that important 
event, a strong desire for a closer alliance among 
the Presbyterian organizations. In 1861 two of 
the churches — the United Presbyterian and the 
Free Church — were united under one synod, and 
in 1870 this united body constituted the First 
General Assembly of the Canadian Presbyterian 
Church. This first union was soon followed by 
a still wider one. Formal negotiations for a com- 
plete ecclesiastical union were begun in 1870, and 
in 1875 culminated in an organization which hap- 
pily united under one General Assembly all the 
scattered Presbyterians in all the Canadian prov- 
inces. 

It will thus be seen that in the important matter 
of healing old divisions and coming together in 
the bonds of Christian unity the Presbyterians of 
Canada are far in advance of those of our own 
country and those of Scotland. No such happy 
blending of differences and closing up of the ranks 
has yet taken place with us or with the mother- 
churches of Scotland. When these distant daugh- 
ters of the old Kirk — one amid the snows of 
Canada, the other almost under the tropical suns 
of Australia — can find a way to meet in common 
Christian brotherhood without any compromise 



2l6 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

of doctrinal principle or ecclesiastical order, one 
would hope that the day is near at hand when the 
three venerable Assemblies of the mother-land 
and the five full-grown daughters of our land, be- 
sides a few little sisters of uncertain age, might be 
induced to imitate the magnanimous example. 

This united Church of all the Canadian provinces, 
with its schools of learning and its boards of for- 
eign and domestic missions, has now entered upon 
its new departure with every element of success. 
According to the reports made at the Edinburgh 
council, it then numbered 928 ministers, probation- 
ers, missionaries and catechists, 3656 ruling el- 
ders, 1450 congregations and preaching stations, 
99,653 communicants, 5 colleges and divinity-halls, 
600,000 population, and an annual contribution to 
church and missionary work of $1,000,000. Be- 
sides its work of home-evangelization in Canada, 
this united Church has four important foreign mis- 
sions — in Trinidad, in India, in Formosa and in 
the New Hebrides — most of them established by 
the churches before their union. The earliest of 
them, New Hebrides, begun in 1848 by the Rev. 
John Geddie, D. D., of the United Presbyterian 
Church of Nova Scotia, has been crowned with 
one of the most remarkable successes of modern 
missions. Between that day and this some twenty- 
three faithful laborers have entered the field, some 
to fall victims in the cause. " The names of George 
N. Gordon, Ellen C. Gordon, his wife, and James 



THE SCOT ABROAD. 21 J 

D. Gordon, his brother, are enrolled among the 
missionary martyrs of Erromanga." But few mis- 
sionaries have been more successful than their 
heroic predecessor, Dr. Geddie, whose high en- 
comium stands to-day on a tablet in the chapel 
of Ancityum, where he was accustomed to preach, 
for ever associated with the words, " When he 
came here, there were no Christians ; and when 
he went away, there were no heathens." 

The pulpit of the Canadian Church has been 
adorned by many men of distinguished ability, 
some of whom have been eminent as instructors 
of youth in the colleges, and some in different 
fields of authorship as well as in the pastoral 
office. 

Even before the union of the several churches 
the Canadian Presbyterians had been highly suc- 
cessful in laying the solid foundations of a num- 
ber of colleges and theological schools for the 
thorough training of their ministry. Of these they 
have five in successful operation in different parts 
of the United Kingdom. Of these the oldest is 
Queen's University and College, at Kingston, 
founded in 1840 by the branch of the Church 
in connection with the Established Church of 
Scotland. It combines the faculties of both arts 
and theology and has the power of conferring de- 
grees. It has seven professors — five in arts and 
two in theology — and has a large endowment. 
Besides other classes of students, it has since its 



2l8 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

establishment educated more than a hundred min- 
isters for the Presbyterian Church. The next is 
Knox College, at Toronto, which is altogether a 
theological institution, having three divinity pro- 
fessors and one lecturer. This was founded in 
1844 by the branch of the Church then known 
as the Free Church, in sympathy with that of the 
same name in the mother-country. Connected 
with it is a preparatory department with two clas- 
sical teachers and one teacher of elocution. This 
institution is also largely endowed and has capa- 
cious and elegant buildings, with a large library 
and a large attendance of young men preparing 
for the ministry. At Quebec is Morrin College, 
founded in i860, with a large bequest by Dr. 
Morrin of that city, for the instruction of youth 
in the higher branches of learning, and especially 
of young men for the ministry of the Presbyterian 
Church. It has two professors in divinity and one 
of mathematics, with lectures in science and phil- 
osophy. Its literary department is affiliated with 
McGill University, at Montreal. The Presbyte- 
rian College of Montreal, founded in 1867, has a 
staff of two professors in divinity and several lec- 
turers. A special feature of this institution is the 
education of French students for missionary and 
evangelical work among the French-speaking 
Roman Catholic population in the province of 
Quebec and elsewhere. It has an endowment 
o r $40,000 and property valued at $60,000. In 



THE SCOT ABROAD. 



2I 9 



Halifax, Nova Scotia, there was in i860 a union 
of the Presbyterians of the province, and the two 
then existing theological halls were merged into 
one in that city in connection with Dalhousie 
College, in which the Presbyterians have a joint- 
interest. The theological hall has three profes- 
sors in divinity, with a large endowment. These 
five institutions annually give to the Church from 
twenty to thirty educated ministers. In addition 
to these, there is also a collegiate institute at 
Winnipeg, in Manitoba, with three instructors. 

Among the more prominent ministers, pastors 
and instructors of the Presbyterian Church of 
Canada may be mentioned Principal William Cav- 
en, D. D., and Professors William McLaren, D. D., 
and William Gregg, D. D., of Knox College, and 
William Reed, D. D., Toronto ; Principal G. M. 
Grant, D. D., John Leitch, D. D., and Professor 
William Snodgrass, D. D., of Queen's University, 
Kingston ; Principal D. H. McVicar, LL.D., and 
Professor J. W. Dawson, LL.D., of McGill Uni- 
versity, and J. C. Murray, LL.D., Montreal; Prin- 
cipal Cook, D. D., of Morrin College, George D. 
Matthews, D. D., Quebec; Principal McKnight 
of the Presbyterian College and Professor Cur- 
rie of Halifax ; Principal King of the College of 
Manitoba ; Professor Robert C. Campbell and 
Rev. John Jenkins, LL.D., Montreal ; Rev. J. J. 
Proudfoot, D. D., pastor, and Professor Loudon ; 
Professor Mouat of Queen's University ; Rev. 



220 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

James Fleck and Rev. James S. Black, Montreal ; 
Rev. D. M. Gordon of Winnipeg and W. C. 
Cochran of Brantford. 

In our own country, from an early period, the 
element of Scottish influence has been wide- 
spread and potential. Many distinct European 
nationalities have had a share in the growth and 
development of our great republic, each in turn 
leaving its peculiar impress on the history and 
the national character. English Puritans, French 
Huguenots, German and Dutch Reformers, Irish 
Catholics, Scotch and Irish Presbyterians, — all 
helped to swell the original stock of colonization, 
and all took part, more or less, in settling the 
country, founding its institutions and achieving its 
independence. To this day the influence of each 
of these nationalities is distinctly felt throughout 
the nation. " Next to the Puritans of England," 
says Dr. Robert Baird in his work Religion in 
America, " we must unquestionably rank the 
Scotch as having largely contributed to form the 
religious character of the United States." From 
the period of the English Revolution of 1688 
down to the time of our national Declaration of 
Independence there was a continual current of 
Presbyterian emigrants into the colonies from 
Scotland and the North of Ireland, all bringing 
with them their religious customs and doctrines, 
and frequently their educated ministers. These 
Scotch and Irish Presbyterians filled up in large 



THE SCOT ABROAD. 221 

measure portions of Eastern Pennsylvania, Dela- 
ware, Maryland, New Jersey and Virginia. As 
the country increased in population this Presby- 
terian stream flowed south and west and spread 
itself over Western Pennsylvania and the Caro- 
linas, and at a later period extended into Ohio, 
Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia, in all which 
regions its influence is distinctly felt to this day. 

" The Presbyterian Church of the United States," 
says Dr. William B. Sprague in his Annals of the 
American Pulpit, " must undoubtedly be consid- 
ered of Scottish origin." The names of promi- 
nent ministers and churches brought to view in 
the Annals, especially through all the earlier pe- 
riods, furnish abundant illustrations of this fact. 
In many cases the early churches of Presbyteri- 
ans in this country were called Scottish churches, 
as mostly, if not exclusively, composed of set- 
tlers from Scotland. New York, Philadelphia, 
and even Boston, had each its Scotch church. 
" Scarcely a prominent city in the land, from Bos- 
ton to Chicago — the youngest of the cities — has 
been without its Scotch Presbyterian church." A 
large proportion, also, of the educated ministry, 
in all the earlier history, was of Scottish birth or 
of Scottish descent and education. Where this 
was not the case, the early ministry was mostly 
from the Presbyterian churches and colleges of 
the North of Ireland, substantially the same as 
the Scotch. 



222 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

This Scottish and Scotch-Irish element, which 
showed its presence so largely in the early colo- 
nization of our country, and which in all our sub- 
sequent history has made its influence felt in both 
our civil and our ecclesiastical affairs, belongs to 
all the separate Presbyterian bodies in our land 
except those of Huguenot or Dutch Reformed 
ancestry. With these exceptions, our whole Pres- 
byterian family of churches — the Northern, the 
Southern, the United Presbyterian, with the small 
remnants of the old Swedes and Associated Re- 
formed, and the more recent large body of Cum- 
berland Presbyterians — may trace its honorable 
pedigree back to Scotland and the North of Ire- 
land ; so that whatever of public and private good 
has come to our great country, whatever of moral, 
religious and educational training, whatever of in- 
dividual prosperity or national greatness, by reason 
of the presence and influence of nearly one mil- 
lion of Presbyterian church-members, with their 
schools, colleges, churches, asylums for the poor 
and the orphan, and diversified benevolent and 
missionary boards and agencies, — must all be 
attributed to that grand Presbyterian and Chris- 
tian civilization which, reared to manly vigor on 
Scotch and Irish soil, ere long found in America 
its truer and more congenial home. 

In the Presbyterian General Council of 1877, 
at Edinburgh, it was abundantly shown how far 
the influence of Presbyterian principles had been 



THE SCOT ABROAD. 223 

extended over the earth, and how that influence 
had emanated largely from the mother churches 
of Geneva and Edinburgh. Dr. Archibald Alex- 
ander Hodge, one of the delegates from the United 
States, said : " It is an historical fact, acknowledged 
by such impartial witnesses as Sir James Macin- 
tosh, Froude and Bancroft, that these Presbyte- 
rian principles revolutionized Western Europe 
and her populations and inaugurated modern his- 
tory. As to their influence upon civil as well as 
religious liberty, and upon national education, it 
is only necessary to cite the post- Reformation 
history of Geneva, Holland, the history of the 
Huguenots of France, the Puritans of England, 
the Presbyterians of Scotland and the founders 
of the American republic, where for the first two 
hundred years of its history almost every college 
and seminary of learning, and every academy and 
common school, was built and sustained by Cal- 
vinists, and where the federal Constitution, provid- 
ing for local self-government with national union, 
is evidently an historical growth from the same 
root which bore the ecclesiastical constitution 
elaborated by the Westminster Assembly." 

It is not easy to say, or even to imagine, what 
our great country, with its noble institutions of 
civil and religious liberty, would be to-day had 
there been here from the beginning no Scottish 
influence, no Scotch-Irish character. No man 
can now tell what our history or destiny would 



224 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

have been had this one factor in the problem of 
our national greatness been stricken out. Every- 
one must feel that it would have been an irrepar- 
able loss. We are safe in saying that, whatever 
our country is to-day, the sturdy Presbyterian, 
whether from Scotland or the North of Ireland, 
both in the earlier and in the later periods, has 
contributed his full share of intelligence, of patri- 
otism, of thrift and of toil to the making of it such 
as it is. Certainly a large proportion of our ablest 
ministers, our efficient school- and college-teach- 
ers, our faithful ruling elders and members in every 
branch of the Presbyterian Church, has been of 
Scotch or Scotch-Irish birth or extraction. Dur- 
ing the struggle for national independence from 
1776 to 1783 their influence, almost to a man, was 
on the side of the country. Whether as pastors 
of the churches, presidents and professors of the 
colleges and academies, members of Congress or 
of the provincial legislatures, as counselors in the 
Cabinet or as commissioned officers or private 
soldiers in the army, they shrank not from the 
responsibility of maintaining the justice of the 
war and the common cause of the country. 

In the darkest hour of the struggle for national 
independence the Southern division of the Conti- 
nental army, under General Nathaniel Greene, was 
largely composed of recruits from the Scotch and 
Scotch-Irish settlements of Pennsylvania, Virginia 
and the Carolinas, with not a few hardy pioneers 



THE SCOT ABROAD. 225 

from the mountainous districts of Kentucky and 
Eastern Tennessee. The comparatively small 
force that won the important and decisive battle 
of King's Mountain, and from that day turned 
the fortunes of the war, was of this character, being 
led by officers who in a number of instances were 
worthy elders of the Presbyterian Church, while 
young men of Presbyterian families, both Scotch 
and Irish, to a large extent constituted the rank 
and the file. Dr. Thomas Smythe of Charleston, 
South Carolina, who drew his information from 
reliable authorities, says : " The battles of the 
Cowpens, of King's Mountain, and also the se- 
vere skirmish known as ■ Huck's Defeat,' are 
among the most celebrated in this State as giv- 
ing a turning-point to the contest of the Revolu- 
tion. General Morgan, who commanded at the 
Cowpens, was a Presbyterian elder; General 
Pickens, who made all the arrangements for the 
battle, was also a Presbyterian elder; and nearly 
all under their command were Presbyterians. In 
the battle of King's Mountain, Colonel Camp- 
bell, Colonel James Williams, Colonel Cleaveland, 
Colonel Shelby and Colonel Sevier were all 
Presbyterian elders, and the body of their troops 
were collected from Presbyterian settlements. At 
Huck's Defeat, in York, Colonel Bratton and 
Major Dickson were both elders in the Presby- 
terian Church. Major Samuel Morrow, who was 
with Colonel Sumter in four engagements, and 

15 



226 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

at King's Mountain, Blackstock's and other bat- 
tles, was for about fifty years a ruling elder in 
the Presbyterian Church." 

One illustrious example of patriotic devotion 
will ever stand in the historic annals of our coun- 
try to tell coming generations of the service ren- 
dered to her cause. It is that of the venerable Dr. 
John Witherspoon. If Scotland had done noth- 
ing more than contribute this eminent scholar, 
teacher, statesman, patriot and divine to the young 
and suffering country at the most important crisis 
of its destiny, Scotland had thereby done enough 
to entitle herself to the nation's grateful remem- 
brance for all time to come. Among all the great 
men with whom he stood associated during an 
eventful and hazardous war, and with whom he 
acted, when the war was over, in laying the foun- 
dations of our free institutions, there were but few 
who filled a more essential and important place 
than did Dr. Witherspoon. He had won a high 
distinction in his native land, both as a preacher 
and as a writer, when he was called to America in 
1768, at the age of forty-six, to fill the presidency 
of Princeton College, New Jersey. The services 
he rendered to the college, both as an administra- 
tor of its affairs and as a practical instructor, were 
of the highest order. The institution at once 
entered upon a new and enlarged sphere of use- 
fulness. He also, during the whole of this pres- 
idency, sustained the office of pastor to the Prince- 



THE SCOT ABROAD. 227 

ton Presbyterian church, preaching regularly twice 
on the Sabbath. When the crisis of the struggle 
for national independence came, he threw his 
whole influence, as a man and as a minister of 
God, on the side of the country, preaching and 
writing in its defence. In 1776 he was elected a 
member of the provincial Congress of New Jer- 
sey, and then of the Continental Congress at 
Philadelphia. Soon after taking his seat in the 
latter body he put his signature to the Decla- 
ration of Independence, for which measure his 
mind had been previously fully made up. 

The memorable occasion, with its far-reaching 
results, has been portrayed in glowing and im- 
pressive terms by Dr. John M. Krebs, as related 
in an interesting volume by Dr. W. P. Breed : 
" When the Declaration of Independence was 
under debate in the Continental Congress, doubts 
and forebodings were whispered through the hall. 
The Houses hesitated, wavered, and for a while 
the liberty and slavery of the nation appeared to 
hang in an even scale. It was then an aged pa- 
triarch arose, a venerable and stately form, his 
head white with the frost of years. Every eye 
went to him with the quickness of thought, and 
remained with the fixedness of the polar star. 
He cast on the assembly a look of inexpressible 
interest and unconquerable determination, while 
on his visage the hue of age was lost in the 
flush of a burning patriotism that fired his cheek. 



228 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE 

' There is,' said he, ' a tide in the affairs of men, a 
nick of time. We perceive it now before us. To 
hesitate is to consent to our own slavery. That 
noble instrument upon your table, which ensures 
immortality to its author, should be subscribed 
this very morning by every pen in the house. 
He that will not respond to its accents and strain 
every nerve to carry into effect its provisions is 
unworthy the name of freeman. For my own 
part, of property I have some — of reputation, 
more. That reputation is staked, that property 
pledged, on the issue of this contest. And, 
although these gray hairs must soon descend 
into the sepulchre, I would infinitely rather they 
should descend there by the hand of the execu- 
tioner than desert at this crisis the sacred cause 
of my country.' Who was it that uttered this 
memorable speech, potent in turning the scales 
of the nation's destiny and worthy to be preserved 
in the same imperishable record in which is reg- 
istered the not more eloquent speech ascribed to 
John Adams on the same sublime occasion ? It 
was John Witherspoon, at that day the most 
distinguished Presbyterian minister west of the 
Atlantic Ocean, the father of the Presbyterian 
Church in the United States." 

These brief but weighty words, pregnant with 
the vitality of a young nation just struggling into 
existence, though uttered by one who had scarce- 
ly been a decade in the country, yet expressed 



THE SCOT ABROAD. 2 29 

the prevailing sentiment of the whole Presbyte- 
rian population of the land. To a man the Pres- 
byterians of every colony were for the Declara- 
tion. Through the momentous struggle the 
Presbyterian Church re-echoed the ardent, deter- 
mined, patriotic and uncompromising sentiments 
of that venerated and noble leader Dr. Wither- 
spoon. He served in this high capacity for six 
consecutive sessions — from 1776 to 1782 — and 
acted a most important part not only on the floor 
in public debate, but on many of the most import- 
ant committees. Many of the important state 
papers were from his pen, and some of the most 
prominent measures adopted by Congress had 
their origin with him. Says Dr. Sprague, " Nei- 
ther his courage nor his confidence ever faltered 
in the darkest day, being sustained not only by 
a naturally heroic spirit, but by an undoubting 
conviction of the rectitude of his country's cause. 
During the whole period in which he was occu- 
pied in civil life he never laid aside his ministerial 
character, but always appeared in every relation 
as became an ambassador of God. The calls for 
the observance of days of fasting and prayer were 
commonly, if not always, written by him. He 
preached always on the Sabbath whenever op- 
portunity offered, and when for a short period he 
visited his church and family at Princeton." 

Besides his great services to the nation, this 
eminent man was called to act a leading part dur- 



23O SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE 

ing the formation period — from 1785 to 1788 — 
when the Presbyterian Church of the country was 
reorganized under a General Assembly and the 
present standards of doctrine and polity were re- 
vised and adopted. The committee selected from 
our most distinguished Presbyterian fathers and 
entrusted with this business were Drs. Wither- 
spoon, John Rodgers, John Woodhull, Robert 
Smith, Samuel Stanhope Smith, James Latta, 
George Duffield, Patrick Alison, Robert Cooper 
and Matthew Wilson. When the first General 
Assembly under the new organization met, in 
Philadelphia, in 1789 — the year of the first meet- 
ing of our National Congress under the new Con- 
stitution — Dr. Witherspoon preached the opening 
sermon and presided until the first moderator of 
the body, Dr. Rodgers, was chosen. Since then 
we have had an unbroken succession of Assem- 
blies and moderators every year to the present 
time; the Church has spread across the con-' 
tinent; several new organizations, with their 
annual Assemblies and moderators, have been 
formed ; the oldest division of it — that under the 
Northern Assembly — has swelled to 24 synods, 
190 presbyteries, 5516 ministers and licentiates, 
19,968 ruling elders, 6287 deacons, 5973 churches 
and more than 615,000 communicants. To this 
vast development in a single line of our Presby- 
terian succession no one man, probably, of all the 
great men of a hundred years ago, contributed more 



THE SCOT ABROAD. 23 1 

than Dr. Witherspoon. And what is true of our 
Northern division of the Church is equally true 
of the Southern Presbyterian Church, and to 
some extent also of all the other branches of 
the Presbyterian family claiming descent from 
the mother-churches of Scotland and the North 
of Ireland. The population of the United States 
now represented by all the branches of our Pres- 
byterian family in the land would number several 
millions of people, and those amongst our most 
intelligent and influential classes. And who can 
estimate the value of the influence of these edu- 
cated classes upon the life and character of the 
nation ? 

" If there is one principle," says Dr. William 
P. Breed, " that stands out in pre-eminent relief 
in the conduct of Presbyterianism in Scotland, it 
is that of the inherent right of the Church to gov- 
ern itself without let, hindrance or interference 
from the State. In the long and bloody war with 
the state under the Stuarts, while English prelacy 
courted, Presbyterianism denounced and repudiat- 
ed, all state dictation and control. It would allow 
neither king nor Parliament to give it laws, or 
even to convoke the General Assembly. Again 
and again it repudiated Assemblies which had 
been controlled and corrupted by state agency 
and influence, and pronounced all their acts null 
and void. It told the king to his face that he was 
neither monarch over nor ruler in, but only a 



232 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

member and subject of, the Church. In our own 
country it was Presbyterianism chiefly that com- 
pelled the State to leave the Church in its native 
independence. Presbyterianism, says Dr. Thomas 
Smythe, first proclaimed this doctrine on Amer- 
ican shores. It was opposed by Episcopacy in 
efforts to establish this doctrine in Virginia, and 
its universal establishment in our country and 
in the Constitution was the result of the move- 
ment made by Presbyterians." 

In a passage of striking eloquence and power 
Dr. Smythe sums up the important and lasting 
obligations under which our whole American 
Church and the country itself must ever stand 
to Scottish Presbyterianism : " Who can compute 
the amount of obligation under which America 
lies to Scotland ? To her we are indebted for 
the first example of a reformation that is a relig- 
ious revolution, originated, carried on and com- 
pleted by the people against the wishes and in 
opposition to the power of princes and nobles. 
To her we owe the noblest maintenance that has 
ever been exhibited of these principles of relig- 
ious and civil freedom upon which our republic 
is based. To her we are indebted for Knox, Bu- 
chanan, Melville, Henderson, Guthrie, Rutherford, 
Gillespie, Argyle — men with genius sufficient to 
fathom the depths of political science, patriotism 
to scan the equal rights of the governed and the 
governor, courage to proclaim to kings their duty 



THE SCOT ABROAD. 233 

and to the people their rights, fortitude to offer up 
themselves, their fame, their honor, their comfort 
and their lives upon the altar of liberty, and faith 
to look forward in confidence to the day when the 
spark of freedom they enkindled and preserved 
would burst forth into a universal flame : 

" * For freedom's battle, once begun, 
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son, 
Though baffled oft, is ever won.' 

"To Scotland we owe the successful issue of 
that eventful and long- protracted struggle for lib- 
erty of conscience, liberty of opinion and liberty 
of action which resulted in the downfall of the 
Stuarts, the glorious Commonwealth, the ever- 
memorable Revolution, and the acknowledg- 
ment of our American independence. Had not 
Scotland united her army with the English forces, 
the Long Parliament would have been subdued, 
the champions of liberty executed as felons, as 
were their exhumed bones, the chains of des- 
potic power again fastened in tenfold severity 
upon an enslaved kingdom, and the hopes of the 
world crushed. To Scotland we owe the system 
of parish schools, the universal education of the 
people, the relief of the poor without laws, the 
establishment of universities under the guidance 
of religion and fully commensurate to the wants 
of an enlightened people. To Scotland we owe 
a large proportion of those ministers and people 



234 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

who colonized this country, Christianized and en- 
lightened it, diffused over it the spirit and princi- 
ples of freedom and fought the battles of our 
Revolution. ' Many Scottish Presbyterians/ says 
Bancroft, * of virtue, education and courage, blend- 
ing a love of popular liberty with religious enthu- 
siasm, came over in such numbers as to give to 
the rising commonwealth a character which a cen- 
tury and a half has not effaced.' ' To the Scotch,' 
says Dr. Ramsay, ' and their descendants, the in- 
habitants of Irish Ulster, South Carolina is in- 
debted for much of its early literature. A great 
proportion of its physicians, clergymen, lawyers 
and schoolmasters were from North Britain. 
Now, these, to a man, were found ranged under 
the banners of our young republic from the very 
beginning of her contest until its glorious con- 
summation.' " 

The important part enacted by the Scotch and 
the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians in the early his- 
tory of our country is well illustrated in a re- 
cent volume by the Rev. J. G. Craighead, D. D., 
entitled Scotch and Irish Seeds in American Soil, 
and published by the Presbyterian Board of Pub- 
lication, Philadelphia. Their numerical strength, 
as compared with the whole population of the 
colonies, was not such as to give them the ascen- 
dency, but owing to their superior education, 
brought with them from the mother-countries or 
gained from the rising institutions of the adopted 



THE SCOT ABROAD. 235 

land, and owing also to their inborn and inextin- 
guishable love of liberty, both civil and religious, 
there was not in the country a more intelligent 
and potential element. 

" Our Presbyterian fathers," says Dr. Craighead, 
" recognizing the fact that civil and religious lib- 
erty exist or perish together, were constrained to 
contend equally for both; and what the world 
enjoys to-day of both it owes very largely to the 
unconquerable fortitude with which they encoun- 
tered the perils and endured the sufferings which 
cruel, persecuting and despotic rulers inflicted. 
With such a history, and with such a providen- 
tial training, it would indeed have been strange 
if the descendants of these heroic defenders of 
the faith should not manifest a strong attachment 
to the Presbyterian form of doctrine and govern- 
ment wherever they made their homes in Amer- 
ica. It was not only because their civil rights 
were imperiled, but also because their religious 
freedom was in danger, that our Presbyterian 
fathers were such steadfast, earnest patriots. As 
in Scotland and Ireland, so here, they recognized 
the fact that civil and religious liberty stood or 
fell together ; so that, while they protested against 
taxation without representation, they were equally 
opposed to any interference with the rights of con- 
science. These principles and sentiments were 
common to the Scotch and Scotch-Irish colonists 
and their descendants, and sustained them through 



236 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

the sacrifices and perils of a seven years' conflict 
for independence. So well known were the opin- 
ions and sympathies of Presbyterians (in favor of 
the cause of national independence) that they were 
subjected to all the evils the enemy was capable 
of visiting upon their persons or their property, 
and, wherever found, they were regarded and 
treated as arch-rebels." 

While Presbyterians of these two nationalities, 
Scotch and Irish, in all the colonies of the mid- 
dle and southern parts of the country, where they 
had settled in large numbers, were wonderfully 
harmonious and united in support of the cause, 
the honor of taking the initiative in a formal and 
public declaration of independence and of separa- 
tion from the British Crown must be accorded to 
the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of Mechlenburg 
County, North Carolina. Their famous Decla- 
ration, now forming a memorable chapter in our 
history, was adopted by this " high-spirited peo- 
ple," assembled in convention at Charlotte, North 
Carolina, on the 20th of May, 1775, more than a 
year in advance of the Declaration of Independ- 
ence of the Continental Congress. Nothing could 
be more significant and important than this action. 
It boldly renounced allegiance to the Crown, and 
unquestionably it had no inconsiderable influence 
in preparing the way for the decisive step taken 
by the Congress a year later. 

Among the extraordinary and weighty deliv- 



THE SCOT ABROAD. 237 

erances of that earlier document stand the words, 
" We do hereby dissolve the political bonds which 
have connected us with the mother-country, and 
hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to 
the British Crown. We hereby declare ourselves 
a free and independent people, are, and of right 
ought to be, a sovereign and self-governing asso- 
ciation under the control of no power than that 
of our God and the general government of the 
Congress, to the maintenance of which we sol- 
emnly pledge to each other our mutual co-ope- 
ration and our lives, our fortunes and our most 
sacred honor." 

The important document containing these res- 
olutions was printed and widely spread in North 
Carolina, was also sent to the Congress in Phila- 
delphia, to the governor of Georgia, and by him 
to England, where the original paper still exists 
in the British State-Paper Office. Any one can 
see the striking resemblance, both in spirit and in 
diction, between its utterances and those of the 
national Declaration of Independence of 1776. 
From this strong similarity and other circum- 
stances some able writers maintained that Mr. 
Jefferson, who drafted the national Declaration, 
had before him this earlier declaration, and in- 
corporated some of its admirable phraseology. 

On this point Dr. Craighead says : " Owing to 
the remarkable coincidence of language, as well as 
the many phrases common both to the Mechlen- 



238 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

burg and the national declaration, the question 
has arisen which had precedence in point of time. 
However this may be decided, or whether they 
both were not indebted to some common source, 
such as the National Covenants of Scotland and 
England, it is certain that the Presbyterians of 
Mechlenburg were in advance of Congress, and 
in advance of the rest of the country, in pro- 
claiming 'the inherent and inalienable rights of 
man,' and that the historian Bancroft was right 
in stating that 'the first voice publicly raised in 
America to dissolve all connection with Great 
Britain came from the Scotch-Irish Presbyte- 
rians.' " 

But in taking this early and decided stand in 
favor of civil and religious freedom it is unques- 
tionable as a great historic fact that these Presby- 
terians of Mechlenburg were but fair representa- 
tives of the whole Presbyterian Church of all the 
colonies, who, as the opening conflict soon dem- 
onstrated, were quick to follow this heroic exam- 
ple of patriotic devotion to principle and to the 
cause of the country. How could they do other- 
wise, when they saw at a glance that it was but 
the embodiment of their own deepest convictions 
— that the struggle for liberty on this new soil 
was but a renewal of the struggle of those eter- 
nal principles of truth and justice for which their 
noble Presbyterian ancestors had so long con- 
tended in Scotland and the North of Ireland ? 



CHAPTER XV. 

RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSION. 

WHAT, now, is the conclusion of this whole 
survey ? 

In casting one's eye upon a geographical globe, 
Scotland, away up toward the north pole, looks 
like the most insignificant country in the world. 
Far removed from the beaten highway of nations, 
it seems a mere speck of land, a diminutive cape 
upon the outer edge of creation. But what an 
influence has gone abroad from that once remote 
and inaccessible corner of the earth, that ancient 
battle-ground of the Picts and the Scots ! What 
a light of history, of civilization, of liberty, has 
shone forth with increasing brightness from that 
little Presbyterian country ! 

What has produced that strong influence, that 
clear light of modern civilization ? It would per- 
haps be unphilosophical to affirm dogmatically 
that Presbyterianism alone has done it, for other 
agencies have had a foothold and for ages have 
been at work there. It will be enough to say 
what cannot in the light of history be well de- 
nied — that Christianity has done it, and that, too, 

239 



240 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

a Christianity of the Presbyterian type. A Pres- 
byterianized Christianity has made Scotland what 
it is to-day — a land of Sabbaths, of Bibles and of 
education, the very bulwark of Protestantism, the 
model of a free Church and a free State, the home 
of an intelligent, thriving, happy people. 

Still further, what are the sons and the daugh- 
ters of this thoroughly Presbyterianized stock 
doing all around the globe to-day ? for there is a 
Scotland abroad as well as at home. The race 
does not decay, though transported to the ends 
of the earth, nor does its religion die. It is found 
that the Presbyterianism which no fires of perse- 
cution could ever burn from the bones of the 
fathers is a type of religion so inwrought into 
the heart of their descendants that no exile from 
home, however distant that exile may be, can 
drive it from their memory. Wherever they go 
their Presbyterianism goes with them, and flour- 
ishes alike amid Canadian snows and under tropi- 
cal suns. With it they are to-day laying the 
foundations of Christian empire in Australia ; with 
it they are advancing the standards of a Christian 
civilization through the wilds of Africa; with it 
they are pushing the streams of emigration and 
colonization through British America and through 
India. Side by side with their Presbyterian neigh- 
bors from the North of Ireland, they are to-day 
helping to extend and to build up, even as their 
heroic fathers helped to found, republican and 



RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSION. 24 1 

Christian institutions, in every part of our own 
vast country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 

The Scotch and the Scotch-Irish — par nobilefra- 
trum — have been from the beginning constituent 
factors in all our national greatness. They have 
contributed not less to the general growth of the 
country at large than to the growth of the Pres- 
byterian Church within the country. The Scotch- 
and-Irish Presbyterian has always been devoted 
to his Church, but not less so to his country. By 
all his antecedents, and the very principles of the 
religion in which he was born, he has always been 
a patriotic citizen while being a true Churchman. 
There is no more glorious chapter in American 
history than that which tells how the heroic sons 
of Caledonia and Erin, after contributing their 
toil to the first settlement of the country in many 
of the thirteen colonies, gave themselves up to its 
service in the hour of its peril and fought under 
Washington and Greene, Marion and Sumter, Pick- 
ens and Anderson, through all the battles of the 
Revolution. Nor did they falter under the vary- 
ing fortunes of the war, from Saratoga to King's 
Mountain, and from King's Mountain back to 
Yorktown, until liberty and independence were 
won. Through all our history and over all our 
institutions, civil and religious, social and educa- 
tional, the influence of Scotland and Ireland has 
been as potential as it has been salutary. Nor 
can America ever forget that at the most critical 

16 



242 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

period of our history it was the Scottish states- 
man and philosopher Witherspoon who in the 
halls of legislation stood side by side with Han- 
cock and Adams, Franklin and Jefferson, Rut- 
ledge and Middleton, and signed that immortal 
document, the charter of our national inde- 
pendence, which made him one of the fathers 
of our country. 

There is, in fact, no stronger or more endur- 
ing type of national character in the world than 
the Scottish ; and when upon that native stock 
is engrafted what is probably the strongest and 
most enduring religious system in the world, 
that of Calvinistic Presbyterianism, the combina- 
tion forms a character which is wellnigh inde- 
structible. It gives us a man who will find his 
way or make one through the world, and wher- 
ever he goes will leave his mark. Migrations 
and intermarriages will not easily wear out such 
a type of character, and after generations the hand 
of the " canny Scotsman " can still be traced in 
his work. And where is the work or the human 
avocation in which the Scotch have not excelled ? 
Some go to foreign shores, and, though landing 
without a dollar, they soon find an opening in 
trade or handicraft, and in the end build up great 
mercantile houses to be carried on by sons or 
grandsons after they are gone. Some have or 
develop a taste for agriculture, and by thrifty 
economy add acre to acre until their wide do- 



RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSION. 243 

mains of the " choicest of the wheat and the corn 
and the vine " surpass anything ever dreamed of 
in the home-land. Some build up great manu- 
facturing establishments and some aspire to the 
high seats of political power, becoming judges 
on the bench or legislators in Congress or gov- 
ernors of our State commonwealths. Some in our 
own country have risen from small beginnings 
until they became great grain-merchants or suc- 
cessful bankers and railroad-builders, controlling 
millions of dollars. Some, leaving their native 
land in early youth, have established permanent 
banking-houses, like that of John and Thomas 
Coutts in London, an institution now a hundred 
years old, whose present proprietor, Lady Bur- 
dett Coutts, does honor to her name and Scot- 
tish ancestry by spreading her magnificent bene- 
factions around the globe. 

Many Scotchmen at home and their descend- 
ants in other lands have risen to the highest dis- 
tinction as medical practitioners or writers on 
medical science, as illustrated in the great names 
of Abercrombie, Cullen, John and William Hun- 
ter and Sir Charles Bell. As college presidents, 
and as writers on philosophical, educational and 
theological subjects, the eminent names of John 
Witherspoon of the earlier times, and that of 
James McCosh of the later, may be instanced as 
fitting representatives of Scottish influence in our 
own country. In recent popular literature it is 



244 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

sufficient to mention George Macdonald and 
Thomas Carlyle, Scotchmen by birth and edu- 
cation, whose widely-read writings have made 
their names as household words in innumerable 
habitations of the English-speaking world. Prob- 
ably no man of our generation has acquired a 
wider literary fame and more deeply impressed 
his thoughts upon all current literature than this 
grim North Briton Carlyle, a man whose idiosyn- 
crasies of style and character would be intolerable 
but for the brilliant originality of his genius. 
He had the dye of a Scotchman deep within 
him, nor could his long life in London nor all 
his German learning wear it out. 

In the United States it would not be easy to 
find any important town or any great city where 
enterprising Scotchmen and Scotch-Irishmen have 
not made their influence felt in one way or an- 
other. The extent to which these elements have 
entered into all social, commercial, professional 
and political life in the United States would be 
apparent to any one reading any large list of the 
names of our prominent men and families. This 
is especially striking in the recorded minutes of 
our larger ecclesiastical bodies. Scarcely less 
conspicuous are such names in any list of the 
men who have attained eminence in the United 
States in the medical profession, in law, in states- 
manship and as educators. Amongst those who 
have attained to the Presidency of the United 



RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSION. 245 

States several belonged to this stock — as Jack- 
son, Polk, Buchanan and Grant — whilst a review 
of the lists of senators, governors of States, judges 
and other high officials in the civil service and dis- 
tinguished officials in the army and navy will show 
many names manifestly of the same parentage. 
Wherever found — whether among the original 
immigrants or their descendants — these names 
indicate an element which has constituted the 
very bone and muscle of the country. They have 
helped to form the working power and the intel- 
ligence of the nation. Nor has the nation ever 
had within its veins a truer and a nobler blood. 
While enterprising and far-seeing Scotchmen 
have been winning the peaceful victories of wealth 
and fortune and contributing to the intellectual 
and moral power of our own and other nations, 
where can a region of the earth be found in which 
Scottish blood has not flowed to maintain the 
honor of Britain and advance the cause of Prot- 
estant civilization ? " Have not the snows of 
Canada, the sands of Egypt, the fields of Spain 
and India, all drank it in like water?" The dis- 
tinguished name of Sir John Moore, who fell in 
Spain heroically battling against the ambitious 
designs of Napoleon, and the still more distin- 
guished name of his former commander, Sir 
Ralph Abercrombie, who fell in Egypt at the 
head of his battalions, stand high on the rolls 
of British military glory. But from their Scot- 



246 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

tish boyhood they had been trained to the ser- 
vice which they thus sealed with a hero's death. 
The Scottish soldiery, bravest of the brave, 
marched to victory or to death in the long strug- 
gle against Napoleon, and contributed their full 
share to win the final triumph at Waterloo. The 
hardy Highland regiments led by Sir Colin Camp- 
bell took part in the desperate battles of the Crim- 
ean war from Alma to Balaklava. When the gal- 
lant Havelock, in India, at the Sepoy rebellion 
of 1857, marched his little army to the relief of 
Lucknow, it was with the veteran remnants of 
Scottish regiments and under the martial inspi- 
ration of the Highland music that the welcome 
deliverer came. 

As illustrating the distinction which the de- 
scendants of Scotchmen, not less than Scotch- 
men themselves, have won in foreign lands, one 
striking example may be adduced. One of the 
ablest generals of France during the wars of Na- 
poleon, Marshal Macdonald, was the son of a 
famous Scotch Highland family, whose father, 
with twenty other Macdonalds, fought for Charles 
Edward the Pretender in 1745 in the field of 
Culloden, and they kept him concealed for many 
weeks. The son, endowed with superior military 
genius, entered the French service in 1784 and 
rapidly rose to the highest honors of war and of 
the state. For distinguished services rendered 
on many hard-fought fields he became a peer of 



RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSION. 2Afi 

France, duke of Tarentum, minister of state, am- 
bassador to foreign courts and grand chancellor 
of the Legion of Honor. After conducting sev- 
eral important campaigns and desperate marches, 
now victorious and now defeated by some of the 
greatest captains in Europe, he was present in 1809 
at the decisive battle of Wagram, and by the em- 
peror was created on the field a marshal of France 
with the words, u For this victory I am princi- 
pally indebted to you and my artillery guards." 
Some one — Bulwer, perhaps — has said that 
" past and present are the wings on which, har- 
moniously conjoined, moves the great spirit of 
human knowledge." The same truth is aptly 
expressed by Tennyson in the oft-quoted lines, 

" Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the 
suns." 

This is the true philosophy of history. Its 
great spirit is the divine intelligence, and its in- 
creasing purpose is the accomplishment of man's 
good and God's glory. No good impulse, past 
or present, is ever lost. No real contribution to 
knowledge and goodness, small or great, can fail 
to help forward the general movement of the 
world. The individual has his place, the nation 
its force, in the onward march of civilization. 

Our aim in this monograph has been to show 
the place and illustrate the force of Scotland in 
this movement of the ages. Both the present 



248 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

and the past bear witness to her power and show 
the unmistakable footprints of her presence at 
home and abroad. Her name is graven on many 
a monument of the past and written with a pen 
of adamant on some of the most enduring institu- 
tions of the present. Though " small among the 
thousands of Israel," she is not forgotten before 
God. She has won a position of usefulness and 
honor which cannot be readily vacated until the 
whole mission is fulfilled and the high destiny 
achieved. She has borne her part in the brunt 
of the world's battle and done her best in the 
defence of the Lord's kingdom, and she is still in 
the front rank of the advancing columns of Chris- 
tian civilization. She has contributed her full 
share to educate the race of men. She has given 
her influence to speed its progress, to augment 
its intelligence, to ennoble its virtue, to refine and 
dignify its enjoyment. That influence in every 
land has been on the side of truth, of right, of 
liberty, of industry and economy, of Christianity, 
of all public and private, s*ocial and domestic, 
improvement. That influence has constituted 
one of the most marked and essential elements 
of modern civilization — so essential, indeed, that 
we should regard an educated man as scarcely 
up to the highest and widest culture from whose 
curriculum of studies had been excluded all 
knowledge of the history, philosophy, science, 
literature and Christianity of Scotland. 



RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSION. 249 

Much has been said in our day about the com- 
ing man and the coming woman. Much fruitless 
speculation also has been suggested as to the com- 
ing destiny of our great republic. It is safest to 
bide our time and await the developments of the 
future. We may rest assured that all real prog- 
ress, whether for the individual man or for the 
nation, will be in the direction of the lines already 
traced in the experience of the past and made 
clear in the light of the present. It is always 
safe to travel such well-known lines, and new ones 
are often dangerous. We know from all the past, 
as well as from the word of God, that it is relig- 
ion that makes the greatest character and the 
greatest nation, for religion is the deepest senti- 
ment of our nature, and religion brings us the 
nearest to God and to truth. Scotland stands as 
an ocular demonstration to the world of what 
Christianity in its highest Presbyterian style can 
do for a people and make out of a people. There 
can be no mistake as to what it has done in Scot- 
land, both in the development of the individual man 
and in the development of the national character. 

In this day of much material science and of 
much skepticism, of much distrust as it regards 
the plainest teachings of the Bible and much dis- 
position to set aside religion altogether, the great 
nations of the earth, confident of their superior 
culture, may be in no humor to profit by the ex- 
perience or to follow the example of God-fearing 



250 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

and Christ-honoring Scotland, and yet for lessons 
of true practical wisdom it is evident that they 
might go farther and fare worse. It is evident that 
they will not much improve in either morals or 
manners by going back, as some of them seem in- 
clined to do, to the old paganism of the classic 
Greeks and Romans. It remains historically true 
that the world already has widely felt and largely 
profited by the influence of Scotland. For its 
wide extent to-day, and its place among civilized 
nations, the British empire owes much to the po- 
tential influence of Scotland. 

Scotland's place in history is well assured — as 
much so, perhaps, as that of any other portion 
of the globe. Its own history forms an integral 
part of the history of the world, just as its realm 
and its people now constitute an integral portion 
of the British empire. That history can never be 
reversed, nor can it ever be forgotten among civ- 
ilized men. Its influence has gone as an import- 
ant factor into the general advancement of human 
civilization. It is easy to see that the world is 
immeasurably better to-day on account of that 
influence than it could have been without it. 
The world would not be what it is to-day had 
there been no Scotland, no Scottish history, no 
Scottish civilization. The general course of civ- 
ilization is the resultant of many different forces, 
some of them exerting their unspent influence 
from the distant nationalities of antiquity, and 



RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSION. 25 I 

others coming in successively from the nations 
and the races that figure in modern history. Of 
the latter class there has been no equal territory 
on the map of modern Europe that has for cen- 
turies exerted a more pronounced and unmistak- 
able influence, and at the same time a more ben- 
eficial and far-reaching influence, on the progress 
of knowledge, the progress of education, the 
progress of human liberty and Christian civili- 
zation, than this little realm of Scotland. 

The religious history of Scotland illustrates 
the great truth that the Lord can work by the 
few as well as by the many. He assuredly did so 
when he selected the narrow confines of Pales- 
tine for the abode of his chosen people. Here 
were unfolded the stupendous mysteries of man's 
redemption, and here was enacted the greatest 
drama of human history in the immolation of the 
Son of God. Here, too, were set in motion all the 
great forces of our Christian civilization. Who can 
deny that in the long struggle for Christian liberty, 
for the vindication of the rights of conscience, for 
the maintenance of the pure gospel, the open Bible 
and the true Church, God chose Scotland, even 
as he had chosen Palestine, as the spot where the 
truth should be asserted, the battle fought out 
and the victory at last won ? It was not a mere 
accident, nor was it without a great purpose, that 
Christianity, originating in little Palestine, on the 
western verge of the Asiatic continent, after be- 



252 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

ing driven across all Europe by the usurpations 
and the persecutions of more than ten centuries, 
should at last make its final stand for liberty and 
God's eternal truth on the rock-bound shores of 
Scotland — another little territory, not unlike Pal- 
estine, though washed by a larger and rougher 
sea. Nor was the later battle in Scotland less im- 
portant in the principles at stake and in the re- 
sults of good for all mankind than had been the 
battle of Scotland so long before. In each case 
the victory was decisive, and it was for all time. 

The lesson derived from the whole history of 
Scotland is a most significant and instructive one. 
It shows what an energetic and intelligent people 
apparently shut out from the greater world, and 
restricted to a narrow and somewhat sterile soil, 
can do for themselves, and not only for themselves, 
but for other nations. The territory on which this 
history was enacted is exceedingly limited, but for 
that very reason it all the better serves to illustrate 
the great law of Christianity — that communities, 
like individuals, must not live for themselves alone 
They can never reach the highest destiny except 
by sharing the common lot of humanity and con- 
tributing their full quota both of toil and of influ- 
ence to swell the stock of the universal good. 
Not only must the light be kindled, but it must 
be diffused from a thousand radiating centres, in 
order to fill the world. It is mainly within the 
last two or three centuries — that is, since the 



RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSION. 2$$ 

Scottish people ceased to fight one another and 
turned their whole energies to the arts of peace- 
ful and productive industry — that the Scottish 
history has furnished for the world this impres- 
sive and memorable example of what a small 
population on a narrow territory can achieve for 
themselves and for the rest of mankind. It is 
in this history, especially in its sublime transition 
from desolating and destructive wars to the reign 
of peaceful and productive industry, that we find 
the very idea and model of modern progress and 
of true Christian civilization. 

No one can deny the immense development of 
wealth and comfort in Scotland during the last 
two centuries. In no part of the world — except, 
perhaps, America — has there been a more marked 
progress in all that goes to make up the conve- 
nience and the enjoyment of life. On every hand 
the intelligent traveler discerns in Scotland the 
indications of growth and improvement. Now, 
the significant and undeniable fact in the whole 
history of Scottish progress, from the beginning 
till now, is that it has been Christian progress. 
There is no type of civilization in the world which 
is more emphatically and intensely Christian than 
that of Scotland. Agnostic philosophers and 
skeptics may deny its excellence or deride it if 
they please, but the fact of its existence and of 
its chief characteristic as a distinctly Christian civ- 
ilization is a matter of history beyond any man's 



254 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

denial. The universally recognized traits of Scot- 
tish character, the world over as well as in Scot- 
land, stand out in proof that Scottish civiliza- 
tion is, and always has been, intensely Christian. 
What are the striking elements of that character 
as exemplified in all the history? They are 
honesty, thrift, economy, industry, moderation, 
patience under toil, endurance, perseverance, re- 
liability, self-reliance, integrity, individual inde- 
pendence and personal courage. What has given 
to the Scot that character ? What has endowed 
him with those stern, rugged and indestructible 
virtues? His religion, his Bible, his Christian- 
ity, his Protestantism, his Presbyterianism. 

Now, it is easy to demonstrate that these ster- 
ling attributes of Christian virtue, so boldly pro- 
claimed by Christianity at the beginning, are pre- 
cisely those characteristics which, when they come 
to be fully incorporated in the life of any commu- 
nity or nation, must in time work out those great 
results of individual character, civil order, social 
comfort and national wealth which we have seen 
produced in Scotland. Christianity is the true 
light of the world. Christianity is the true life 
of the nation not less than of the individual. 
Christianity is the true civilizer of nations. Chris- 
tianity contemplates mankind as a great hive of 
active workers and producers of wealth. Chris- 
tianity not only enjoins all those great economic 
and industrial virtues which must create wealth, 



RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSION. 255 

and with it comfort, but it frowns upon every vice 
and every evil passion and every bad habit and 
every sinful indulgence which might squandei* 
and destroy wealth. It is impossible that any 
Christian community, large or small, should fully 
live up to the requirements of the gospel without 
in time becoming rich, virtuous, intelligent and 
happy. 

Doubtless there are social disorders in Scotland 
as in all other Christian countries. Ignorance, 
vice, crime, intemperance, drunkenness, with their 
sad entailments of poverty, insanity and pauper- 
ism, are still found there in the crowded cities, as 
they are in all great centres of population, but 
they are the exception, not the rule, of social life 
in Scotland. They exist there, not because the 
Scotch are Sabbath-keeping Christian people, but 
in despite of Christianity. Christianity there, as 
everywhere else, is at war with these evils, and 
Christianity, if fully and universally accepted by 
the people, would soon abolish the evils. To a 
great extent it has always abolished them, and 
where it has not gained a complete victory it has 
at least held the evils in check by the authority of 
law and the voice of universal public opinion. In 
no land under heaven is law more supreme and 
public sentiment more pronounced and inflexible 
in its judgment than in Scotland. Christianity has 
done much for a nation when its intelligent public 
sentiment, embodied in the permanent forms of 



256 SCOTLAND'S INFLUENCE. 

law is unalterably against evil and the evil-doer. 
This victory of righteous law and Christian author- 
ity the Bible has certainly gained in Scotland. 

After every deduction has been made for law- 
lessness and folly, it can still be said that the 
gospel not only holds its own, but is making 
headway, in the land of Knox. The Scot has 
gone abroad to the ends of the earth, but he has 
not thereby drained the life-blood of the stock at 
home nor dimmed the light that to-day shines in 
Christian beauty over his native soil. The reign 
of law, both natural and revealed, is recognized 
and respected in Scotland. Quietness and peace, 
righteousness and truth, industry and economy, 
social order, individual liberty and public justice, 
prevail among the people ; while the rights of 
property, the rights of conscience, the security 
of human life, the sanctity of divine worship and 
the claims of the Lord's day are everywhere 
respected. We know not when or where the 
millennial reign of the Messiah shall begin ; but 
if all the earth to-day stood as near the cross as 
Scotland stands, with as true a gospel, as pure a 
worship and as thorough a Christianity, we should 
think that this long-expected reign' of peace and 
good-will among men might be near — even at 
the door. 

THE END. 



